Democratic lawmakers accuse companies of shrinking product sizes while charging consumers the same price
It’s becoming a common experience for Americans going to the grocery store: your bag of chips seems lighter, your favorite drink comes in a slimmer bottle, and you’re running out of laundry detergent more quickly than usual. And yet things are staying the same price.
On Monday two Democratic lawmakers launched an attempt to get to the bottom of the phenomena, accusing three major companies, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills, of shrinking the size of products while charging consumers the same price – a price-gouging practice known as “shrinkflation”.
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“Shrinking the size of a product in order to gouge consumers on the price per ounce is not innovation, it’s exploitation,” Warren and Dean said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this price gouging is a widespread problem, with corporate profits driving over half of inflation.”
It’s less than a committee. They sent a letter and released a statement.
But maybe the FTC will be doing something too.
I recently noticed that the 52oz “half gallon” bottles of orange juice were cheaper per unit than the 89oz “gallon bottles”. I couldn’t figure out how that could be the case.
Well, now they’ve taken away the 52oz bottles and replaced them with even smaller 46oz bottles. And they’re once again more expensive per unit than the big ones. (And the little single-serving bottles are 11oz, probably going down to 10.5 soon.)