[dangoldin]

Somewhat related:

Apparently laundry detergent manufacturers kept on increasing the size of their standard detergent bottle without increasing the washing power in order to make it look more impressive on a shelf. This caused an "arms" race in detergents.

WalMart stepped in and refused to stock detergent bottles past a certain size. At that point, the manufacturers stopped making the large size bottles.

If there's a player with as much power as WalMart then they can dictate pretty much whatever they want - and sometimes their interests are aligned with the customer.