{"id":75348,"date":"2022-07-29T05:00:01","date_gmt":"2022-07-29T09:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=75348"},"modified":"2022-07-28T16:21:55","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T20:21:55","slug":"shrinkflation-isnt-the-only-way-companies-try-to-sell-you-less-for-the-same-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/07\/29\/shrinkflation-isnt-the-only-way-companies-try-to-sell-you-less-for-the-same-price\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Shrinkflation&#8221; isn&#8217;t the only way companies try to sell you less for the same price"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And, as <a href=\"https:\/\/vpostrel.substack.com\/p\/shrinkflation-disqualiflation-and\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Virginia Postrel<\/a> points out, &#8220;shrinkflation&#8221; <em>does<\/em> get noticed for economic statistics, unlike some of the other changes many companies are making:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_74218\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-74218\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 15px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation-480x394.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"394\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-74218\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation-480x394.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation-779x640.png 779w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation-150x123.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation-768x631.png 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Cut-costs-through-shrinkflation.png 937w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-74218\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Original image from www.marpat.co.uk<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>My latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2022-07-26\/shrinkflation-is-back-with-new-ways-to-short-consumers?sref=qTxNuhoP\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomberg Opinion column<\/a> is explained well in an excellent subhead (contrary to popular assumptions, writers don&#8217;t craft the headlines or subheads that appear on their work): &#8220;Packaging less stuff for the same price doesn&#8217;t fool consumers or economists. But diminishing quality imposes equally maddening extra costs that are almost impossible to measure.&#8221; Excerpt:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>If a 16-ounce box contracts to 14 ounces and the price stays the same, I asked Bureau of Labor Statistics <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/opub\/mlr\/author\/church-jonathan-d.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">economist Jonathan Church<\/a>, how is that recorded? &#8220;Price increase&#8221;, he said quickly. You just divide the price by 14 instead of 16 and get the price per ounce. Correcting for shrinkflation is straightforward.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>New service charges for things that used to be included in the price, from rice at a Thai restaurant to delivery of topsoil, also rarely sneak past the inflation tallies any more than they fool consumers.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>But a stealthier shrinkflation is plaguing today&#8217;s economy: declines in quality rather than quantity. Often intangible, the lost value is difficult to capture in price indexes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Faced with labor shortages, for example, many hotels have eliminated daily housekeeping. For the same room price, guests get less service. It&#8217;s not conceptually different from shrinking a bag of potato chips. But would the consumer price index pick up the change?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Probably not, Church said.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This phenomenon, which Doug Johnson aptly dubbed &#8220;disqualiflation&#8221; in a Facebook comment, is widespread. One example is the four-hour airport security line I chronicled in an earlier Substack post. Another is the barely trained newbie who screws up your sandwich order \u2014 a far more common experience today than four years ago. It&#8217;s the flip side of a phenomenon I wrote about in <em>The Substance of Style<\/em> and in economics columns in the early 2000s (see <a href=\"https:\/\/vpostrel.com\/articles\/how-changing-the-sheets-can-make-a-hotel-room-new\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/vpostrel.com\/articles\/how-well-can-economists-measure-variety\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>During the 2000s and 2010s, inflation was probably overstated because of unmeasured quality increases. Now there\u2019s the opposite phenomenon. Quality reductions have become so pervasive that even today&#8217;s scary inflation numbers are almost certainly understated.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you can read the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2022-07-26\/shrinkflation-is-back-with-new-ways-to-short-consumers?sref=qTxNuhoP\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">column at Bloomberg<\/a>, please do. But if you run into the paywall, which allows a few articles a month, you can use <a href=\"https:\/\/wapo.st\/3oxxAz8\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this link to the <em>WaPo<\/em> version<\/a>, which doesn&#8217;t have links.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And, as Virginia Postrel points out, &#8220;shrinkflation&#8221; does get noticed for economic statistics, unlike some of the other changes many companies are making: My latest Bloomberg Opinion column is explained well in an excellent subhead (contrary to popular assumptions, writers don&#8217;t craft the headlines or subheads that appear on their work): &#8220;Packaging less stuff for [&hellip;]<\/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],"tags":[1456,409,165,290],"class_list":["post-75348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","tag-competence","tag-corporations","tag-inflation","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-jBi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75348","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=75348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75349,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75348\/revisions\/75349"}],"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=75348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}