Same price, smaller pack.
Why it works
People remember prices far better than sizes. A chocolate bar that goes from 100 g to 90 g at the same price is an 11 per cent price rise that almost nobody registers, while the same rise on the price tag would be noticed by everyone. Shrinking the pack moves the increase to the number people do not look at.
The honest comparison is the unit price: the cost of one gram, one millilitre or one item. That is what this works out, before and after.
How this works
Each size is converted to grams, millilitres or items using exact definitions, then the price is divided by it. The real change is the new unit price against the old one. A pound is exactly 453.59237 g and a US fluid ounce exactly 29.5735295625 ml, so an old 1 lb pack can be compared with a new 400 g one without rounding error. Weight and volume are never compared with each other.
Questions people ask
What is shrinkflation?
Shrinkflation is when a product gets smaller, or contains less, while its price stays the same or falls by less than the size. It is a price increase that does not show on the price tag.
How do I calculate the real price increase?
Divide each price by its size to get the price per unit, then compare the two. If the old pack was 500 g for 5.00 and the new one is 450 g for 5.00, the unit price goes from 1.00 to 1.11 per 100 g, an increase of about 11 per cent.
Is shrinkflation illegal?
In most places reducing a pack size is legal as long as the label states the new quantity accurately. It becomes a problem when the packaging misleads, for example a box the same size with more air in it, or a label that implies nothing changed.
Related
Nothing you type here is sent anywhere. There is no request in this page and no analytics on it.
Free, and staying that way. If it changed what went in the basket, that is the whole point.
Support the idea