This seems like a great idea and i wouldn’t mind it getting expanded to become an EU wide norm.
That said it only adresses part of the problem. Another way consumers get tricked are recipe changes to substitute expensive ingredients for cheaper ones. And this one also subverts the mandatory kg/€ (or litre/€) price notices, which in a way already help with identifying shrinkflation. Although prominent warnings would help a lot fighting the psychological tricks involved in shrinkflation.
Personally i would also like laws to go even further and make it mandatory for companies to maintain public databases with product sizing and ingredients. Although i assume it wouldn’t be easy to fight against companies trying to subvert such system and claiming that near identical products are something new rather than just a new worse version of something existing.
On that note i also miss the more standardized portion sizes we had here in Germany for a lot of products. Actually something that sadly had to be abolished due to eu regulations, which at the same time at least seemed to have given us the already mentioned kg/€ price labels.
I had to jog my memory with this article (in german) from 2009 when the change apparently happened. An example it gives is that e.g. sugar (up to a size of 1kg) could only be sold in portions of 100, 250, 500, 750 und 1000g. So no trickery with random inbetween sizes. Obviously not a huge problem with something like sugar, but it similarly also applied to something like chocolate bars. Which nowadays come in the most random, constantly changing weights.
Maybe a bit heavy handed, but i wouldn’t mind fighting shrinkflation in some areas by simply forcing standardized sizes.
I don’t think it’s heavy handed. Shrinkflation fucks in recipes. One recipe calls for condensed milk. Due to shrinkflation I have to buy two cans and throw half of one away.
I don’t think this is the right way to go. Mandatory “compare prices” to be displayed with the same, or better, viability as the price is much better. That way the consumer immediately sees that the price went up since last week. What it also brings is the opportunity to compare which one of two sizes of the same product is a better deal.
In the US grocery stores are required to list the cost per weight. It mostly works, unless one of the manufacturers decides to show the price in grams or kilograms, as opposed to oz or pounds.
That needs to be regulated then. It doesn’t really matter if the unit you buy is measured in pounds and the compare price is in kilograms per dollar, you’ll still see the change in price of the compare price unit is standardized.
It really needs to be weight/price or size/price then. The way this sounds in the article the producers just also need to change price a little to avoid getting that sign. Per weight or size that might still end up more expensive for the consumer.
That was what I meant with compare price. Sorry for being unclear. Compare price should be weight per price. That way you would see the price increase since the product (that looks the same but isn’t because of less amount in the package) suddenly got a higher compare price since last week while the purchase price is the same.
I’m sorry but I don’t understand your suggestion. That’s what the sign does. It warns clients when the package got smaller and or price went up. Also, all stores are obligated to show the price/kg on all products so it’s easy to compare.
You don’t need a special sign for shrinkflation. What’s needed is just price per kg (I live in the metric world) displayed as big as the price per unit. This should be enforced as the norm and not on whether the store wants to do it or not.
Consumers who aren’t interested enough to keep track of price increases since last week won’t care about a special sign either.
“If it’s not a 100% perfect all encompassing solution then it’s not worth doing” is such a braindead take of which I see people like you make everywhere
I love the friendly tone you have in a discussion.
It’s not the producers that’s going to pay for putting up and taking down the signs. It’s the stores and in the end the consumers.
Add to this the cost of having someone going around checking that the rules are followed.
Keeping track of whether there is a compare price or not on all items is much easier and cheaper.
So yeah, it’s a populist solution putting up signs for price increase only for goods that has shrunk and it seems extremely easy to circumvent if you want to.
Here’s how you circumvent it: Introduce a 750g, 900g and 1000g package of the product. 900g is more expensive per gram than the 1000g. Then you have a “shortage” on the 1000g package and some stores run out of it. There’s no shrinkflation here since the 900g package has been there all the time.
There’s a lot of money to make here so hiring a lawyer that finds every single loophole will be a good investment.
But yeah, you call the take braindead and watch the politicians, lawyers and producers laugh over a change that cost you, not them, money.
I do that because I used to work in grocery stores and can noticed even small, incremental price changes on many items. Most consumers don’t do that and hardly notice 3 cents more on this and 2 ounces short on that. We are already accustomed to toilet paper and laundry detergent mega-size and “concentrated” bullshit.
Price per kilogram is good if you want to compare product A vs product B (we already have that). Here the point of this law is to be able to compare product A with itself in another point in time, because there is nothing actually in place to be able to reliably do that other than keeping a list of all prices at all time. The two together will be a very good tool to inform the consumers about the shady practice of some producers…
The whole point with shrinkflation is to trick the consumer to think that they’re buying the same amount when they don’t.
If you make it easy for the consumer to see what the cost is per kilogram, they will immediately see that the price for the same size package of cereal they always buy has gone up.
It’s okay if you want to pay extra for your groceries, but I don’t. I’m perfectly fine with compare prices since the compare prices are unaffected by the change of package sizes.
No, because some things I only buy once a month or less… I’m trying my best to remember all the prices and all, but it’s easy to miss these kinds of things when there’s dozens of things you’re buying. So yes, an extra warning for when a product got more expensive is fine. Again…the price/kg is already there, not sure why you’re beating that poor horse. This is on top of the price/kg. An extra warning, not replacing the price/kg sign, which, again, is already below every item in the store.
Producers make millions on shrinkflation. That means they have millions to spend on finding a way around this and you as a consumer will still end up paying for it. I hope I’m wrong, I really do but I’m sure they will find a way around this.
Where I live (Sweden) it’s not mandatory by law and it just happens to be that most often compare prices are printed in a much smaller text size as compared to the price.
Price per kg is still mandatory in France. The full history of it for every product is not. So we don’t necessarily notice the price increase if it’s done in small increments
Add comment