[ImPostingOnHN]

this is an accurate description of shrinkflation, though not a good justification of it

if companies were honest, they'd put"29% less, but the same price! Inflation, you know?", and more-informed consumers could make more-informed choices

indeed, "Customers are very sensitive to increases in prices" is a nicer way of saying "shrinkflation makes it easier to hide from consumers that they are receiving less value for their money"

Thank you for this site, if the author is here, it's something I felt we needed to make markets more informed and more efficient. I'll be submitting content.

[kepano]

I'm not defending CPG companies. I'm pointing out that if you're an indie maker inflation is a problem you need to contend with in your own pricing. Once you start thinking about it from that perspective, you realize how difficult of a problem it is to solve in a way that feels fair to customers.

In theory software is easier because you could more easily change your pricing every month. With CPG these products sit on store shelves and the manufacturers have less direct control over the pricing.

[ImPostingOnHN]

The issue most people have with shrinkflation isn't that the manufacturers made a tough call when all the options were tough, it's that manufacturers do so in a manner deliberately calculated to hide information from the consumer, and in some cases outright deceive them (if they didn't, this shrinkflation tracker wouldn't exist)

To reiterate, a company honest with consumers would inform them they were getting less for the same price, and try to make the case you're making now: "hey, sorry about this, but times are tough, and we can't raise prices"

Less scrupulous and deceptive companies don't

[kepano]

Not sure if this fits under shrinkflation, but the practice of substituting quality ingredients for cheaper ones is even worse IMO. When Nutella did it, it caused a huge kerfuffle, but it's virtually impossible for a consumer to track this across all the products they buy.

An upstream problem is the money printing that causes some of these incentives in the first place.

[robertlagrant]

> To reiterate, a company honest with consumers would inform them they were getting less for the same price, and try to make the case you're making now: "hey, sorry about this, but times are tough, and we can't raise prices"

How do they do this? They make a chocolate bar that a shop buys and puts on a shelf.

[ImPostingOnHN]

They have to alter the packaging to account for the changes. They can either do so in a way that makes apparent to the customers that they're receiving less value for their money, making sure they're aware of it, or they can do so in a way that attempts to deceive consumers and hide this information.

An example of messaging for the former is described in the quote you quoted. Another would be to use different-looking packaging, to indicate that it is not what it was before. If a consumer will still buy the item when properly informed of the lower value, then this apparent labeling should not have any effect on sales. If it does, it means the information hiding was material, which makes it bad.

tl;dr: companies hide this information because being deceptive increases sales, if it didn't, they wouldn't

[robertlagrant]

> If a consumer will still buy the item when properly informed of the lower value, then this apparent labeling should not have any effect on sales.

If it looks different, consumers might not know it's the same thing just smaller. E.g. if I buy a box of Celebrations, I know what each little sweet is because it shares the same packaging as its normal-sized equivalents. I know it's smaller because...it's smaller.

[ImPostingOnHN]

If it doesn't look different, customers might not know it's a different product than before due to the quantity change, and won't be prompted to investigate further.

Indeed, if the packaging is the same except for the quantity labels, then you don't, in fact, know it's smaller, because both the quantity change and the packaging change has been calculated to hide that fact from you. That's the problem being solved here.

With a proper packaging change, on the other hand, your confusion is resolved within seconds, when you read the packaging, which can include whatever explanatory info the manufacturer decides to put there. And if it's not resolved? The manufacturer should do better to explain.

[adamc]

Being honest doesn't pay as well. If it did, they would just raise the price.

They are hoping you don't notice.