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Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I get it's to shame the brands. But do the French not have unit prices? That's how I determine the better prices among different brands regardless of package size.
Unit prices shows you the cost per g or ml. This would show changes to historical pricing that you may not notice otherwise.
A product could still be cheapest per unit or in the middle but the increase wasn't noticed as they changed the packaging and volume of the product. Strange sizes also make comparison difficult without the actual ticket.
Why not both? This just makes it easier to notice at a glance. We should celebrate whatever wins we can get as consumers.
You mean if they display price per gram/kg/oz/ml etc? It's irrelevant whether they do or not, that's not the point. They are comparing the price against the same product before , not against other similar products from other brands. It doesn't matter if Lipton Iced Tea is the cheapes iced tea brand per litre, it matters that they reduced the product size compared to what they used to
Right, but the before price is no longer available to me now. When I'm at the grocery store, I have to make decisions on today's prices. My choices are to buy brand A, B, or C. Or I can buy nothing. Or I can go to another store and hope for lower prices.
The company making the product likely has their own costs that have increased, such as increased labor and/or materials. In an inflationary environment, I cannot reasonably expect every company to maintain the same prices indefinitely, the company would then be forced to sell the product at a loss, which would lead to bankruptcy of the company.
Companies could increase prices, and/or decrease quantity arbitrarily to increase profits. But that's where competition with the other brands would keep them in check.
Yes, you are right in what you say but are still missing the point. The point isn't to inform the consumer about the best price for an item now, and it's not to help regulate the price of an item against other similar items. That is not the goal here. If that happens or not is irrelevant.
The point here is to shame a company who is now selling less of their product but at the same price, without making and advertisement about it.
Unlike what you mentioned, a lot of the base costs for production of these items have not increased and or have actually become cheaper, therefore resorting to shrinking the product and not shrinking the price is a morally questionable practice. This is why the name and shame move is happening.
A lot of consumers buy by brand out of habit, and we've seen countless times stories of "I went for my cereals like always, the box looked the same, the price was the same, but it actually weighed a third less and didn't realise until I got home and opened it. Had I realised earlier I would have bought a different brand". So the second objective of this move is to warn the consumer about these changes in value that are not as obvious at a glance.
I hope this helps explain better.
I mean, I understood that part. My first sentence was:
I guess I'm probably more vigilant than most about looking at the unit price, which would reveal these kinds of price changes vs competitors.
I think it's an unreasonable expectation that companies will advertise they've raised prices or shrunk packaging. The shrinkflation is deceptive for sure, but I've just come to expect that's what companies will do, especially in an inflationary environment.
Then if you get it then why you insist on talking competitors? I don't see how they are that much relevant here
Unit prices are easy to remember when you buy a single product. I bet you know the price of gas per unit immediately. What was the price of Pepsi per liter today? What was the price of Coke per liter? There are dozens and dozens of soda products alone you would have to memorize. And that’s just soda.
I applaud a store using its data to communicate to customers how prices have changed. We should do this everywhere.
They'll probably only do it to pull a stunt like this to improve their negotiating power like they are here, because if they left it up all the time it would discourage sales.
That method is very useful but it wouldn't help you notice if every single company making a specific kind of product increased their prices the same amount (or reduced quantity)
They do, but the shelf price is the most prominent, given that this is what you'll pay at the counter.