I would LOVE to see more of this. Looking at you GATORADE, with your half-inch-deep plastic rim on the bottom and new hourglass bottle shape. 32oz sized bottles are 28oz now and MORE expensive. Fuck shrinkflation to death.
Yeah for some reason drinks seem the most effected by shrinkflation, I hate going to the drinks aisles these days because everything seems so overpriced, even just regular tap/spring water
And the margins are so large on drinks already that they’re just trying to scrape even more money from you
Potato chips have the same, you can’t know how much is in them because they blow them up with gasses in order to “preserve” them.
Ehh, it still says how many grams is in there, I’ve never really understood this gas-argument
Except the grams aren’t always accurate: https://globalnews.ca/news/9958974/customer-takes-to-tiktok-after-buying-half-full-no-name-bag-of-chips/.
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Is the gas to prevent them from being crushed in transit?
Yes.
And it works, so the quotes around “preserve” are absolute bullshit.
And before you accuse me of being a shill for big chip, try putting both a sealed bag of your chips and an unsealed but folded closed bag of chips in your backpack with your laptop and books for a day walking around, and see which one has larger, more complete chips at the end of the experiment.
It does its intended job of protecting chips very well.
It also allows producers to visually conceal how much product is actually in the bag. Weirdly enough they’re still using the same size bags instead of a smaller, more efficient ones that would save manufacturing and transportation costs.
I’d love to see this naming and shaming becoming a standard. I want to know if the product I’m buying has changed and while I try to do this myself, it can be tricky to keep track of all the products I buy and it’s not like I’m scanning the exact weight every time and memorizing it, just that it’s generally the same weight. These scumbag companies are always trying to sneak by all these changes over time, it’s great to finally get a spotlight shining on it. If some sort of legislation can be made to force companies to note changes in products made in the last 6 months on the label, that would be great.
I want to know if the product I’m buying has changed and while
Makes me think of a local git diff since your last purchase(s). See at a glance if it has changed, and what has changed.
A simple QR code should do the trick. People can even make apps for tracking the changes.
maybe even a barcode, some sort of universal product code that apps could read easily
Exactly my thought for a long time. A law which mandates companies to…I don’t know…put on a label, occupying at least 1/3 of the whole packaging with giant red/white font to say at least for 3-6 months: “The net weight/contenct was reduced by 15%.”
If only smart glass is as popular as mobile phones. When Google introduced their smart glass, I dreamt of a day when a price history overlay is displayed when looking at a barcode, like how Keepa is doing for Amazon.
I also like German price display which has effective price, as in Eur per liter for drinks, making it dead simple to compare products. A smart glass will make it available everywhere.
Back to Carrefour, I really like that they are pushing pro consumer actions. However, we all know too well that they won’t do the same when it’s their products which are shrinking. Still better than no action though.
Afaik the base price display is requiered by EU law, atleast Czechia got them too on my last vacation.
Price per litre / kg etc is in Australia too
It is but it does nothing to curb shrinkflation in my experience.
I’m trying to think of a way to mandate this kind of notification but I can’t think of a way to do it that could be both clear and mandated. Perhaps if the price per changes there needs to be a history listed on the label.
One big problem with it is that in the short-term it discourages sales, so groceries aren’t incentivised to do it except as a stunt like this, so they won’t want the notices to be prominent. Ultimately they still want you to buy the stuff because then they make money.
I think a price most recently changed date next to price per unit would be great.
Yeah I mean a price per unit history over the past X period, at least a year if I had my way, so if it changes a lot you end up with a clear list. That’s actually not bad. Over time people would learn to read it and be educated about it and there might be more public pressure against it.
Wait a decade and AR might be popping off
Google said that a decade ago…and it was said the decade before that…
I don’t really know what google has said, I wasn’t really referring to them, but AR is plenty used in industry already.
There’s just some way to go left for consumer use, but we are getting there. 5G networks are also supposed to help our with the possibility, due to their increased capabilities.
Consumer grade AR is being worked on, and it is expected to become a big thing eventually.
I was referencing Google Glass, which was Google’s attempt to make a consumer grade AR, a decade ago. They also said that they would have Glass commercially rolled out within the decade. It failed, not for any technical reason, but because it looks stupid and it makes everyone around the person using AR feel awkward. It was universally ridiculed online, has no use case and it has no consumer market. As you said, it only has uses in industrial applications, because factory workers don’t have to care about fashion or aesthetics in general in their work place. But people are already uncomfortable with everyone having a camera and microphone in their pockets at all times. Now imagine that every single second of your day was potentially recorded, sent back to Google, analyzed, used to train an AI, minified to tailor ads to manipulate your behavior, which would be easy because you have a screen glued to your eye 24/7 already; and also potentially having it all shared with authorities without your consent, along with the faces and data of every single acquaintance and stranger you interacted with without their consent…yeah, that doesn’t sound like another step in the privacy dystopia we live in already.
But Apple is making the Vision Pro now, I’m sure a couple million of gullible consumers will shell out money for that. And maybe the AR era will finally come to us.
Those are all technical reasons though. Aesthetics are limited by the technology. And the glasses calling home more than it should is also a technical and regulatory reason.
It can absolutely be done while sidestepping all the concerns. Or better yet, have glasses running FOSS software.
But sure, those concerns are reasonable, but they are not fundamental to the technology itself, but to our societal reality. That stuff won’t get fixed by avoiding technology, only by societal change. And you can be sure that all kinds of stuff will be pushed into people if that societal change doesn’t happen, no matter whether it’s AR or not. (Just look at the recent trend of enshittification of everything).
Pick a lane, is it “limited by the technology” or are concerns and limitations “not fundamental to the technology”. Both statements cannot be true at the same time.
AR, just like VR, have problems for which the technological solutions are either not physically possible in reality as we understand it, or the practical solutions completely nullify any cool factor the technology has to offer, or the price to overcome them is so high that they would never be financially feasible to become a commercial product. Like other futuristic fantasies like flying cars, and holographic interfaces, they sound cool in paper, are shit in reality.
I was referring to the concerns about privacy.
…also XR technologies are absolutely technically feasible. They’re not even that extravagant these days. The fundamentals are in place.
Man, the French really don’t fuck around, do they?
Though the article says that Carrefour themselves do it for their house brands, so does that mean they’ll also apply it to themselves? XD
Uhhh, no. They are gonna shame others, but not themselves. Capitalism my dude.
Tbf, their stated purpose is to bring attention to the price discrepancy on diminished products. I would assume they believe their pricing is fair in that respect.
Yeah, no… Carrefour conglomerate is peak capitalism, so I can only assume this action is a way to push people to their own brand stuff.
It appears to be in some mystic arcane language but I have been able to translate it:
This product has seen its liters
REDUCED
and the price charged by our supplier
INCREASE
WE COMMIT TO RENEGOTIATING THIS RATE
Carrefour are fucking thieves and their own low-price brands are also shrinkflationated carcinogenic crap.
They don’t really have anything to teach.
After seeing so, so many french brands and retailers remain in Russia after that country invaded Ukraine (the rest of it, as they occupied Crimea already), I just started assuming all large french companies are complete total shits and have been boycotting them since then.
Were I live there a lot of large french retailers, so this actually has made a significant difference in my purchasing habits.
I don’t think any company gets “really big” playing by the rules.
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Lemmy trolls already? Man it’s been so quiet and nice here
don’t forget the price in retail include the destruction cost. they are winning on both side.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The French supermarket chain Carrefour has put labels on its shelves this week warning shoppers of “shrinkflation”, the phenomenon where manufacturers reduce pack sizes rather than increase prices.
It has slapped price warnings on products from Lindt chocolates to Lipton iced tea to pressure top consumer goods suppliers Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever to tackle the issue in advance of much-anticipated contract talks.
Since Monday, Carrefour has been putting stickers on products that have shrunk in size but cost more even after raw materials prices have eased, to rally consumer support as retailers prepare to face the world’s biggest brands in negotiations due to start soon and end by 15 October.
“Obviously, the aim in stigmatising these products is to be able to tell manufacturers to rethink their pricing policy,” Stefen Bompais, the director of client communications at Carrefour, said in an interview.
The Carrefour chief executive, Alexandre Bompard, who also heads the retail industry lobby group FDC, has repeatedly said consumer goods companies are not cooperating in efforts to cut the price of thousands of staples despite a fall in the cost of raw materials.
In this he is backed by the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, who in June summoned 75 big retailers and consumer groups to his ministry urging them to cut prices.
The original article contains 494 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 56%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I know only one case where this shrinkflation thing was stopped - one beer company decided to sell 0.4l cans, because “that’s what the customers want”. It turned out pretty fast that wasn’t what their customers wanted :)
Good for them. I made tacos for the first time in ages a couple of days ago, and I could not believe the size of the shells now. I would have called them child-sized, they were so small. It’s disgusting.
Sounds like you just bought normal sized tortillas, like they use in Mexico. “Child-sized”? Lol.
Do they use hard shells in Mexico?
Yes but for tostadas not hard shell tacos.
Hard taco shells are an American Tex-Mex dish – they’re distinct from tortillas or tostadas
Motherfucker, have you never had a big ass burrito? The real Mexicans make their own tortillas, and if they feel like it, they’ll make one big enough to be used as a bedroll.
Geat idea! There’s no reason this couldn’t be done everywhere by citizens with access to sticker printing services… I’ve spotted a few products myself in the past year and wouldn’t be against sticking some labels on them to warn my fellow shoppers :)
Reduflation
fun fact, I was in Taiwan and passed by a Carrefour. Someone mentioned “wow it’s such a taiwanese brand”. There was a French flag posted directly in front of the main doors!
To be fair, most likely of these ‘foods’ look like complete junk. Over-processed shit. Huge mark-ups on what amounts to packaging and cheap fat/sugar/industrial flavours.
Lurpak shrank all their butter by 20%. In looks it’s barely noticeable. In reality it’s a 25% price hike.
Shrinkflation is largely a myth. Items do not shrink relative to inflation, in fact the majority of claimed products are larger now than they were 50 years ago.
People often cite certain chocolate bar sizes with comparing the size today to that from the 90s. It’s not a fair comparison and not an example of shrinkflation. Mars bars have dropped 20% in size since the 90s but still are 4% larger today then when they originally came out.
Neither are small boxes of cereal. When I worked at Wal-Mart 9 years ago those same thin boxes gave me grief when putting them out on the shelves.
i see milk tasting almost like water like skimmed milk, as well as some juices i used to be able to buy, fillings in sweets like crackers and wafers being almost as thin as paper or outright stopping being sold and replaced by cookies using drops for a filling, yogurt being replaced by “milk drink” (yogurt is thicker and slower to flow down, i can tell the difference, but the label also changes, idk the english term for “bebida láctea”), a lot of sweets and bags reducing from 800g down to 600g, down to 400g while keeping the same price, packaging turning opaque and non-transparent, potato chips and other salt foods being filled 1/5th, down from 1/3rd, even instant noodles going from 150g down to 80g in the past decade.
only things that aren’t changed as much is what i know to be the very basic things that people in here uses and cooks every day, that being rice (5kg), beans (5 and 1kg), pasta (500g all variants), sugar and salt (1kg), etc.
mostly depends on the country you are in (i’m in Brazil), but the point is that it doesn’t stop at the chocolate bars.
