{"id":74217,"date":"2022-06-10T05:00:31","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T09:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=74217"},"modified":"2022-06-09T17:10:55","modified_gmt":"2022-06-09T21:10:55","slug":"dont-think-of-it-as-shrinkflation-think-of-it-as-corporations-helpfully-trying-to-help-you-lose-weight-at-the-same-or-higher-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/06\/10\/dont-think-of-it-as-shrinkflation-think-of-it-as-corporations-helpfully-trying-to-help-you-lose-weight-at-the-same-or-higher-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t think of it as “Shrinkflation” … think of it as corporations helpfully trying to help you lose weight (at the same or higher prices)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Companies have several different ways to cope with rising input prices, including just swallowing the increases without passing them on to consumers … stop laughing<\/strong>, I mean it’s at least theoretically possible, right? They can also just hike retail prices, which we’ve seen a fair bit of already, but that sometimes agitates consumers enough to materially depress sales. A sneakier way, which we’re also seeing a lot of, is to shrink the product but sell it for the same price. Sometimes, it will take a while for people to notice they’re getting less than they used to<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Original image from www.marpat.co.uk<\/p><\/div>\n

The rise in consumer prices has rightly received a great deal of attention, as inflation hovers around 40-year highs. Everyone can see that virtually everything is getting more expensive, but fewer have noticed that many items are also getting smaller.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday the Associated Press ran an article<\/a> under the headline “No, you’re not imagining it \u2014 package sizes are shrinking.”<\/p>\n

The AP spoke to one shopper, Alex Aspacher, who does a lot of shopping for his family of four in Ohio. He noticed he was still paying $9.99 for Swiss cheese even though the package had shrunk from a pound to 12 ounces.<\/p>\n

“I was prepared for it to a degree, but there hasn’t been a limit to it so far,” Aspacher told the AP. “I hope we find that ceiling pretty soon.”<\/p>\n

This phenomenon \u2014 known as “shrinkflation<\/a>” \u2014 is nothing new, of course. It’s just more pronounced now than in any time in recent memory because inflation is much higher.<\/p>\n

But what exactly is shrinkflation? As economist Peter Jacobsen explained last year, it’s simply a different kind of inflation.<\/p>\n

“Shrinkflation is a form of inflation because you’d have to spend more money to get the same quantity or quality as you did in a previous year,” he explained. “The prices have remained the same, but the products are worse.”<\/p>\n

The only difference is, instead of raising the price of an item or service, businesses are reducing the quantity or quality of it while keeping the price the same.<\/p>\n

Edgar Dworsky, a consumer advocate who has tracked shrinkflation for decades, told the AP shrinkflation is rampant at the moment because of the underlying economic conditions.<\/p>\n

“It comes in waves,” said Dworsky. “We happen to be in a tidal wave at the moment because of inflation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Companies have several different ways to cope with rising input prices, including just swallowing the increases without passing them on to consumers … stop laughing, I mean it’s at least theoretically possible, right? They can also just hike retail prices, which we’ve seen a fair bit of already, but that sometimes agitates consumers enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,13],"tags":[409,165],"class_list":["post-74217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-usa","tag-corporations","tag-inflation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jj3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74217"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74220,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74217\/revisions\/74220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}