WENDY KNOWLER: Size does indeed matter — when you’re paying for it
Manufacturers don’t want to draw customers’ attention to their sneaky pack-shrinkage shenanigans
25 February 2024 - 06:01
Customers generally don’t respond well to corporate attempts to pull the wool over their eyes. And when they discover an underhand move, it inevitably results in a breakdown in trust and affinity. One would think that’s the last reaction a grocery goods manufacturer would want to provoke in its customers, yet “shrinkflation” shows no sign of letting up as a global practice.
That’s the act of reducing a pack size enough to cut input costs, but not so much that consumers will notice, rather than transparently increasing the price of the existing pack. But manufacturers do face stiff shrinkflation pushback, and from some very influential sources...
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