The beloved “Sesame Street” character griped on social media that his cookies were getting smaller. “Me hate shrinkflation,” he said. Some politicians agreed.
We need to be passing consumer protection legislation to make companies stop doing things like this. Just “calling on them” to end the process isn’t going to do anything to fix the problem. Companies have no incentive to do the right thing for their customers. The only thing they care about is short term profit.
Any company that has ever used advertising saying something to the effect of: 20% more product for the same price must now ALSO label their shrunken products: 20% less for the same price.
Do that long enough, and what you’ll find is that you won’t be able to buy Oreos from your local Walmart, and you will be able to buy Oreos from your neighborhood drug dealer.
We need to be passing consumer protection legislation to make companies stop doing things like this. Just “calling on them” to end the process isn’t going to do anything to fix the problem. Companies have no incentive to do the right thing for their customers. The only thing they care about is short term profit.
What’s a reasonable approach to this?
Standardize portion size, and disallow any change in packaging volume/weight? How can this be reasonably defined?
Ban price increases, presumably on a weight basis?
One option would be better enforcement of packaging laws. Plenty of boxes are oversized because the amount put in them has shrank.
Another option could be requiring labels on products that have changed size recently.
Any company that has ever used advertising saying something to the effect of: 20% more product for the same price must now ALSO label their shrunken products: 20% less for the same price.
Do that long enough, and what you’ll find is that you won’t be able to buy Oreos from your local Walmart, and you will be able to buy Oreos from your neighborhood drug dealer.