Beware of 'shrinkflation,' inflation's devious cousin
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For example, a jar of Jalapenos, product photo: https://i.imgur.com/mprWr6R.jpg
In reality, the jar's cross-section isn't circular as it appears, it's an ellipse/oval: https://i.imgur.com/dXDUOR9.png
Only the first photo was included in the item listing. When the groceries were delivered and I pulled out the jar, I was so surprised by the odd football-like shape that I couldn’t stop laughing for a few minutes at how well they’d fooled me.
Another common thing to see is familiar product packaging that is just “scaled down”. Everything about the packaging looks the same or very similar, but smaller - especially fonts. This deceives the eye into believing the product is much larger. I recently fell for this when shopping for some conditioner. The packaging is not exactly the same but close enough to fool me at a glance:
What I bought: https://i.imgur.com/MdAuhS0.png
What I expected: https://i.imgur.com/MGxdD0d.png
I'm inclined the believe this is on purpose because in real life, the fonts are way too small to read comfortably. If not trying to mislead, I would expect the packaging to be designed to be legible, right?
It's especially frustrating because I usually would've just paid more for the larger size.
This sewing machine's image[0] looks huge! When in reality, it's $20 and mostly a "toy" machine; not much bigger than 4AA batteries[1]. Or maybe the dude is just really small.
More hilarious than nefarious as in your case.
[0] https://my-test-11.slatic.net/original/8dcf4c63812b0453fc3ed...
[1] https://laz-img-sg.alicdn.com/p/3126136a068a0eca84086249126b...
Warning: risk of injury or death!
I've noticed that tiny condos and apartments in real estate photos look enormous. I'm undecided on whether this is a deliberate attempt to mislead or an artifact of having to use a wide angle lens to capture the whole room (but an artifact that the seller and real estate agent like).
The same tradition occurs in filling the written description of a place with no amenities. “Walking distance to schools & churches” is a popular filler. Τhe facility could be 50 feet away or it could be a 5 mile walk; anything short of walking alongside the freeway is fair game to describe in this fashion.
Realtor associations at least in the Netherlands have guidelines (e.g. on what distances amounts to 'walkable') that prevent this sort of thing, I see no reaons our country would be unique; that said, do you have any specific examples of ads like this? It's not that I'm that fond of realtors, but some of the over the top claims in this thread are really exaggerations. Will you find examples of exaggerated claims? Of course. The question is, is it 'common'? I'd say no.
My father worked as a realtor for some years so he taught me how to parse listings (and photographs) for the reality behind them.
Varies greatly by income (which is why HN thinks it's extinct).
Sometimes a narrative is just that.
Three things:
1. I get that interior shots need a wide angle to capture the boundaries of a room in a single photo. But there's a limit. Most pictures I see dial it up to those crazy levels where obviously square or circular items become rectangles and ovals. Here are 2 images I just now randomly picked:
This kitchen is long! https://i.imgur.com/YxrRMSy.jpg
Nope, just small: https://i.imgur.com/rPCSMUT.jpg
(But, the rise of 3D walkthroughs is a good antidote for this, so credit where it's due on that front.)
2. Saturation! Please, stop maxing out that slider. Sometimes it's just vivid blue sky and greenest green grass, but other times they go so far that the highlights are all blown out and everything just looks weird.
3. Fake fireplace fires, sunny weather, etc. A lot of photos have a fake sunny sky inserted into window openings, or a "fire" in the fireplace that's obviously been pasted in. Different random listing shows 2 photos with incredible luck—the flames are identical.
https://i.imgur.com/jhnwvAv.jpg and https://i.imgur.com/Ut1aTdl.jpg
If you use flashes, the fire will be too dark and won’t really show in the exposure. Moving flames will also screw up HDR.
I still think it’s stupid and only did it once at a realtor’s request.
My wife and I couldn't stop laughing because the agent photoshopped a view into the kitchen window, but even in the context of the video it's clearly a plane with a texture on it just outside the window. It looks like a low-res poster of the Himalayas hung outside their kitchen window; it's not a convincing fake view in the slightest.
Don't know what the agent was thinking, the actual view out the window is better than that.
Ah yes, the old roaring fire directly below a window :)
Anything is better than realtor cell phone pictures. I had a couple hire me independently because their realtor just quickly bopped around their house taking pictures on her phone…vertically. Yeah.
You can just tilt the camera and fix the verticals in post, but then your composition will be thrown off as some of the image will need to be cropped.
If that's the issue then you can shoot the image with the 16mm and then crop to get exactly the same image (other than resolution) as you would have shot with the 20mm lens. For example, here[0] I have an image shot with a Samyang 14mm rectilinear lens, distortion-corrected and exported to JPG with UFraw. I then loaded that image into Hugin, set the input crop factor to 1 (full frame), and re-exported with a 84x61.9 degree field of view based on some online FOV tables[2] for a 20mm lens in a full-frame camera. As you can see, the resulting image[1] is what you would expect from a 20mm rectilinear lens. Hugin can also translate from a fisheye lens to rectilinear if that is the type of lens you happened to have on hand.
The trade-off is that you're losing some resolution, but you would usually be downscaling from the raw image anyway for the online listings.
I mean, you can see conspiracies everywhere if you look for them, but the examples you're showing don't convince me in the least.
Manufacturers actually pay for the volume of space used in stores. The more efficiently they use the space, the better. Having smaller jars or tubes for the same grams is a good thing!
"Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by systemic incentives promoting malice."
That does not in any way mean they aren't deliberately making their smaller products look larger by proportionally shrinking down the font sizes.
Don't expect anything more than what is visible in the food packaging.
The little plastic window in the packaging shows lots of pepperoni?
Don't assume the whole pizza is uniformly covered in pepperoni.
You'll just make an ass out of yourself.
see https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-5274153/Phot...
I've seen pix of sandwiches where the packaging looks like there's tons of filling only to reveal that all the fillings have been jammed to the front of the package window.
ah, daily mail...
It could just be that they have machines that try to randomly scatter pepperoni (or whatever) and then the ones where none of the pepperoni ends up visible fail QA. I think that's happening with at least the waitrose smoked salmon in that article, because I have had that before and it definitely wasn't misleading.
Of course, I'm sure the corporations would say it's "to stop the product getting damaged"
It's marketing meant to grab the consumer's attention on a competitive shelf. If you look at the box of chocolates, for example, it's space meant to balance required flashiness (graphics + window to see chocolates) with their target price point. Companies do this all the time when selling tech gear that isn't measured in weight or volume. Small stuff like webcams will often have giant mostly empty boxes so they have room for graphics and copy. Shaving and perfume sets also do this all the time too.
Nutella has been doing that for decades.
Btw, with those jalapenos... not only is the jar misleading, but I found those jalapenos to be mushy and bland. I found this brand afterwards that was much better: https://www.mezzetta.com/products/deli-sliced-hot-jalapea-o-...
They'll be ready to eat the next day and last a couple of weeks.
I like adding garlic and dill.
[1]: Gourville, John T., and Jonathan J. Koehler. "Downsizing Price Increases: A Greater Sensitivity to Price Than Quantity in Consumer Markets." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 04-042, March 2004.
Get the full text at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=559482
NPR only linked to a citation page :(
As a downside, it does lead to "crafty consumers" using the unit price as their highest priority criteria for selecting products, and disregarding factors like quality and nutrition. This leads to way too many products in the ultra low price segment, and a hard time for makers of higher quality products.
It's a race to the bottom, and shrinkflation still happens.
That will happen no matter what. If you are poor you pay attention to price of the things you buy more then quality.
I know it from practice, only when you have some financial stability you can educate yourself to pick the best product and not just kg/$.
> This leads to way too many products in the ultra low price segment, and a hard time for makers of higher quality products.
I don't think there is any kind of competition between quality product vs cheap products. Be it food or tools or etc. Both cater to different segment. Its like saying that if ford or fiat slash their prices by half, mercedes will loose some of the customers.
Poorer people don't have much choice but to settle for cheaper options. When you have more money you will not buy processed food etc even though its cheap then quality unprocessed food because its hidden cost of health damage is too high.
Literally nobody shops by trying to buy the cheapest calories per unit. Calories are simply too easy to come by for that to matter. What people do is they make a menu (not necessarily before they go to the store) for the next 1-N meals then they choose brands or products that will accomplish that in the cheapest manner possible. This means they see the numbers and buy house brand butter. Where you get into issues is stuff like eggs where it's kind of hard to tell if the increase in size by buying large outweighs the savings per dozen by buying medium or where substitute products are not sold in easily convertible units and you have to do much more math in your head.
I know at least 2 people who have min/max'd their calories/dollar to peanut butter and rice and beans.
I’m fine with the standardized prices now, and that seems to work for most customers.
That's already a thing in the supermarkets I go to
I really wish more people cared about this, because the obvious solution (mandating SI units) would help finally move us toward metric...
You can find generics that cost much less though and are pretty much the same thing.
I tried in the UK a bunch of Tesco/Sainsbury cereal clones and they're as good as the branded ones, while costing 1/3 (which surprised me, my experience 10 years ago was that generics were significantly worse than the original).
I play rec. soccer, and have signed up for different leagues over the time.
Back in 2013-2015 for each game, the usual time was about 60 mins slot, with few minutes given for a mid game break and in between games team switch.
So, about 27 mins for a half, 5 mins a half game break, and a bit of a margin.
Over time this has been shrinking when it became 55mins, then 50, and now a partly 40mins for a whole game. You basically get 18 mins half.
To add to the injury each team now is stuffed with more players, so you have more subs and less play. it is annoying.
Usually it was only one crappy league doing this, but now the other ones are started to shrink game times, raise prices and so profits. So.... yeah, shrinkflation even in soccer games.
Maybe the main shrink is deteriorating field conditions as cities decline to maintain them properly? But the NTPSA can’t really control that.
It sucks...
Ps. There are more serious leagues, but they tend to play in fields further away from Manhattan. And the current leagues profit out of the 'there is always newbies moving into nyc every year', mantra.
High interest rates lower the value of properties to keep things sufficiently affordable. Thus low inflation is actually really bad for first time home buyers who can a just afford the mortgage in year 1 and likely still just afford the mortgage in year 15.
There's often quite a difference depending on which container size you buy, and it's not always the case that the largest container is the best value.
But would I notice that last week I was getting a 20oz package and this week it is a 19oz package? Not sure. I do remember this happening with candy bars as a kid. The price would be the same, but the bars would get smaller and smaller. Then suddenly the price would go up, the bar would be bigger, and the cycle would repeat.
I think they are purposely trying to make it more difficult to compare.
Blueberries, $j/lb
Organic Blueberries, $k/pint
Portion sizes of 65 gram in a 90 gram container. Then the label shows for 10 gram, portion size, and 100 grams. But not the actual weight of the container!
I mean, what 'portion' consists of 65/90th of a container? They know full well that the actual portion people consume $PRODUCT in is what is in the box.
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/changes-nut...
1gram, 100gram, container size.
That way: you always know the exact amount you're actually buying, + it's easy to calculate if you consume less than the container, either by nx the amount of 1gram or nx100 gram of the product. Nothing else really makes sense, for any reason.
Same thing sometimes happen when you buy uncooked ham or turkey: they often inject it with a lot of salt water ("up to 8% brine solution") to increase the weight without increasing the actual product.
Some things are per $/oz, others per $/lb, or $/unit, sill others within a same category go by volume ($/floz, $/qt, $/gal...). It makes comparison a pain: I end up looking at the metric unit on the packaging and doing the mental calculation myself.
In Soviet Russia... (it is a kind of legend, I would not vouch for its truth value)
A roll of toilet paper was of 52 meters length. It was because the standard caliber in artillery was 120 mm, so in case of war the industry can be reoriented to fill cartridge case with a powder. When artillery moved to a 125 mm caliber the length of a roll of toiler paper increased to 54 meters.
For example, lets say a chocolate bar contains 80% chocolate and 20% food wax. A year later it contains 70% chocolate and 30% food wax. No inflation measure in the world accurately measures that. You can't measure for it because there's too many judgement calls if you do.
Also, there are goods/services whose quantities are not well measured. Another commenter wrote about his soccer league lowering the amount of pitch time a "session" takes while increasing the players - both diminishing his play time. That's not getting captured at all.
I think the bigger problem is that it's difficult to tell when this happens. There are judgment calls you need to make to adjust for this, but it's not an intractable problem. Official data sources have to make more subjective judgment calls than this constantly.
Grab a Hershey chocolate bar. How much chocolate is in there? Who knows?
For example, tracking bulk beef prices won't capture the labor costs of the would-be-butcher COSTCO can't hire.
Actually that might be a good heuristic, I don't remember the last time I bought food that even has ads. The store itself does have some ads that feature some of the items, I guess.
Is there any evidence that this happens often enough to affect CPI?
btw in the few cases where I've seen the concentration of tasty ingredients go down, it was clearly done so they could advertise the new version as "low-calorie" or "healthy". Consumers get what they demand.
The standard product was 70% coconut and 30% water, the "light" and "calorie reduced" version right next to it was literally just 50/50 coconut/water, at the same price.
Why yes, please sell me water at coconut prices! /s
Systematised evidence? No, but that's the complaint. It's a reasonable enough idea, so it's reasonable to expect a professional, funded body to do the accounting.
First of all CPI only tracks basic commodity goods like bread, milk, coffee, etc as a proxy for the basic cost of living. It doesn't track complex or premium products like frozen burritos.
It tracks the quantity of these products people actually buy and their cost per quantity, so reductions in the size of chocolate bars or amount of cereal in packets will not fool the CPI.
It does not take into account the quality of these products. If people start buying less premium coffee and more store brand coffee, or if manufacturers start putting less cocoa and more fat in chocolate this will not show up in the CPI.
The CPI is just one statistic, and should be considered alongside other measures such as consumer buying power and cost of living calculations.
I'm not an expert, so is my comment mostly correct? I only brought up CPI to illustrate an example of a widely purchased thing not being included in that particular metric. The rest of the comment, I think, was agnostic to the particular metric used. The point being that what the economic situation an individual or family faces is far more complex than any one metric and the people of a country can become less well off than the metrics reflect.
Consider seeking out European chocolate. There's no provisiion in the regulations for "wax", and fat not from cocoa-butter is restricted to 5%. And if it uses any non-cocoa fat, that has to be stated on the label, thus: 'contains vegetable fats in addition to cocoa butter'.
The 5% allowance was introduced at the urging of the UK, in the face of opposition from countries like France, that don't allow non-cocoa fats at all. Brands like Cadbury (now US-owned) have long used non-cocoa fats (non-milk fats in milk chocolate), and risked being banned from calling the resulting product "chocolate".
It seems that importing Cadbury's chocolate from the UK to the US is a trademark infringement; the US (Hershey's) version of Cadbury's is lower quality. Lower than the UK product - and the UK product doesn't meet the highest EU standards.
I understand that many USAians actually prefer Hershey's to european-style chocolate; that's OK, I'm sure it's partly just what you're used to. But if you do buy imported european chocolate, the proportion of cocoa solids is at least 20%, and the proportion of non-cocoa fat is restricted to 5% - except in the case of milk chocolate, which can contain milk fat, in which case the product must be named "Family Milk Chocolate".
Perhaps one might call this tinkering with composition to save money "composition-flation"? No, I guess not, it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.
Godiva (Belgian but owned by a Turkish company) is usually what I see people buy for gifts. It looks like they closed all the US stores this year.
Aldi and Trader Joe’s sell great European chocolate. I know the house brands are relabeled but I’m sure they sell other European brands.
I recently ran a dark chocolate tournament for my brother-in-law's birthday, and the two most expensive chocolate won exactly zero one-on-one contests.
I typically like to eat single estate chocolate. Not that there aren't good blends (I even honestly like Hershey's as a nostalgia thing, though its too cloyingly sweet and full of flavor dulling diary product) but the variety you can get from single estates is noticeable. You can explore lots of different variations within the kinds of flavors you enjoy, and weed out the flavor profiles you don't like as much. I prefer leather and tobacco flavors, my wife prefers fruity, brighter flavors. Lots and lots of small single estate chocolates to explore in both those areas, and even some of them with multiple chocolateers giving their own directions from the same raw chocolate.
And then in 2016, some of the mountains are removed. And/or made shorter.
Also not captured in inflation, though the press seemed to pick up on it (hint: toblerone)
Whether or not chocolate, in particular, is tracked more closely is not my point. My point is that quality, not just quantity, is very difficult to track. I could have said that lawnmowers' decks are getting thinner using the same steel, but that more removed for most people.
That's really weird ... because it's an investment, yes, but not for the renter paying the increasing price. I don't understand how they allow for that.
That being said I think there is also a measure called "asset inflation" that I think tries to measure things like the cost of investment goods where you'd find houses included. The idea being that inflation is a tide that rises all costs, including stocks. You can't really say the market or a security is doing well or not if the underlying unit of measure (the dollar) is being debased.
Hence my original point that housing costs are included through a heuristic. The point being that a survey asking "how much do you think you could rent your house for" is really un-scientific. If I'm not participating in the market, there is no market, and the price is a guess.
Is that guess good within an order of magnitude? Sure. Is it good within 5%? No.
Here's one that got me recently. The El Monterey frozen burrito, Steak & 3-Cheese version. It used to be just steak and cheese as the filling. And some chilies. https://i.imgur.com/os3RK8y.png
They swapped that out for one with rice included. It tastes worse, has less protein, almost certainly less cheese, but still sells for the same price. https://i.imgur.com/hgGTNVI.png
No mention on their website of this at all. If it were an improvement, I'd expect the marketing department to tout it. But it's not. Instead of raising the frozen burrito price from $1 to $1.19 or whatever, they replaced expensive ingredients with rice.
It's still the same SKU, weighs the same, and sells for the same price. I'm sure the CPI impact is 0.
As Goodhart's Law says, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Note: we do this with all kinds of statistics, just look at police reporting on felonies. Too many? Just charge misdemeanors for the least violent crimes and all of a sudden you have reduced violent felonies by 20% in just one year!!!!
We've been having inflation for years but we just don't measure it in a way to see it. Take average household spend on healthcare, education, housing, food in 2010 and in 2020 and there will it is pretty hard to argue inflation wasn't already here. Now, we've dumped trillions to prop up the markets and inflation is starting to "officially" appear despite the new calculations. What's worse, is that the trillions aren't even being used to increase GDP or build infrastructure for future growth. It is only gone to create even bigger asset bubbles in housing and equities. I don't think the Fed can unroll this money and actually I think they have decided that they won't even bother to try. We are living in a monetary experiment and we'll find out in the next few years if MMT can really save us or not.
The only people who think that inflation is higher than the official statistics don't know the impact of inflation. Most of the time inflation is reality giving you a punch in the face. If inflation really happened between 2010 and 2020 where is the punch? If anything I feel we spent that time running away from reality and no, the problem isn't whatever the central bank is doing because it is acting as the last line of defense. Most of the time it is responding to political failures, which is why central banks are independent in the first place. If the central bank were democratized it would be unable to perform its function as people will abuse it to refuse reality even more. Just read up on what Erdogan did.
Housing
Health care
College
Decreased quality of goods (aka, fake stuff on Amazon)
> If consumers were the rational creatures depicted in classic economic theory, they would notice shrinkflation. They would keep their eyes on the price per Cocoa Puff and not fall for gimmicks in how companies package those Cocoa Puffs.
Certainly people with limited budgets or fixed incomes might notice the change and adjust.
However if you are running to the store after dropping you kid off at soccer practice and only have 30 min to shop you care more about time than the small amount of money they are “up charging”.
Besides, people might be in-elastic with regards to their brands. Certainly I could switch to another cereal but if I want coco puffs I’ll pay the premium because lucky charms won’t substitute.
I stopped buying the best named brands and switched most of my cereal buying to malt o meal brands, didn't really notice a difference.
But if malt o meal went from a 60oz bag to a 55oz one you’d probably still continue buying it rather than switching to something else.
It’s OK to be elastic for some purchases and in-elastic for others. Very rarely is price per unit the sole criteria for a consumers choice.
My grocery budget is $100/week, which I break into two $50 shopping trips. I will swap to cheaper brands than I am accustomed to in order to or remove unnecessary items all together in order to fit my budget.
In the EU there is a problem where even this is subject to shrinkflation.
e.g. a jar in Nutella bought in Germany will taste better than a jar of Nutella bought in Poland. Even though the grams of Nutella per Euro is the same.
https://www.dw.com/en/is-eastern-european-nutella-worse/a-39...
A similar thing happens with 3rd world cars doing worse in crash tests than the equivalent US or European models.
I also bought some Nongshim’s Neoguri ramen packets from Amazon a few days ago and received it yesterday. I paid slightly higher than I used to, but more importantly, I can tell that the size of the noodle in each pack has shrunk because I have left over packets that I bought from last year.
For those things you can’t shrink, like eggs, they are over $6/dozen in San Fran, I’ve seen some for $10/dozen.
That's not even getting into the insanity that is Peter Luger's bacon.
I mean, I have seen $10/dozen but they were some premium organic (not kidding) imported from Japan eggs in the Japanese mart.
Eggs are one of the types of food where you can observe a massive difference in quality based on price. The $3/dozen eggs have extremely thin white shells that crack almost too easily. The yolks are pale yellow, and runny, and burst just from falling into the pan.
The $7/dozen eggs have brown shells that are very thick and take a few hard whacks to break. The yolks are a rich orange color and thick. It takes a few pokes to break the yolk in the pan. And that's just the appearance. Taste and smell are totally different too, with the $7/dozen of eggs being much more flavorful, and frying better.
On the topic of shrinkflation I think eggs are actually a great example. You now have to pay $7/dozen to get high quality eggs. If you buy the cheap eggs you are getting an extremely subpar egg from what must have been an extremely sickly chicken. The egg itself hasn't shrunk, but the quality has certainly declined.
Around here eggs are often a loss-leader promotional item. $0.99/doz is not uncommon to see.
My favorite with the OJ is the '50% less sugar' OJ.[0]
It's just half OJ at normal concentration, half water!
[0]https://www.tropicana.com/products/trop50/no-pulp-trop-50
For fans of shrinkflation, you should also enjoy /r/shrinkflation on Reddit.
I’m not sure if they’re agreeable to your point of view, but both programs are well produced and I enjoy them.
view-source:https://www.mouseprint.org/2020/08/03/here-we-downsize-again...
When they switched to tin fluoride, it was “new and improved” too.
Source: cranky old chemistry professor that’s probably deceased now
Step 1: Shrink existing packages but keep the same price
Step 2: Introduce a new package with a catchy name like "mega-sized" that is equivalent to the older normal size but now for a higher price
Step 3: Discontinue the smaller package
Step 4: Rinse and repeat
I will readily say that the above is a luxury that not everybody has, but then buying the best per oz price is a luxury not everybody has either. Certainly there are oddball cases like you pointed out, but typically the larger items have a better per oz pricing and not everybody can afford the higher upfront price even if the per item price is less.
Like for Pepsi it will show $1.67/per litre, for instance.
Then you can easily shop all the 24 or 30 multipacks.
Also, like other countries the actual weight inside the same packaging are shrinking. Chocolate Bars are a good example.
They've tried pushing the smaller than 350ml can size, but it hasnt stuck. In the UK they have a 330ml can size.
Source: I work in Marketing and currently am working for retail FMCG and F&B clients, so research things on shelves more than your average human :-)
Well there are the new taller cans that look 'bigger'. even though it probably costs more to make those in terms of aluminium ammounts.
The person that buys the overpriced "value" pack is basically giving money to PepsiCo or whatever, but in effect that subsidizes the conscientious consumer.
Back in the day, ~50+ years ago, we used to have stores like this [1] and you'd buy most items based on how much it weighs. I wish we would buy things not as a "package", but loose. Some countries in Asia still have stores that sell stuff by the kilogram. There are also grocery stores in US like Sprouts that have dispensers for dry fruits, nuts, grains, cereal, etc. which is sold by weight. Everytime I see one, I ditch the brand name packages and opt for it.
There is a great analog in sound: the Shepard tone, a.k.a. the "sonic barber pole": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9VMfdG873E
To your ear, the pitch constantly descends, yet it can go on infinitely without ever actually getting "low".
What can they do about standardized beverages sizes and such? You can't go around calling something a 12oz can and only put in 10 or 11.
On the other hand they have high margins on this, so it's not like they'd save a lot on water.
Drives me nuts.
I think they’re trying to avoid a tobacco style lawsuit for the sugar content in a decade or two because we all know the hazards of sugar.
The Canadian coke formula used to have more sugar and they’ve reduced it. I think this is why.
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1449563/height-radi...
But commercial success is much more driven by consumer preferences than by optimized packaging. So don't expect to see many tall, thin coke cans. (Which may tip over too easily, feel odd in the hand, slosh when one takes a quick drink, etc.)
Probably because in my area the slim/mini cans tend to be more expensive than the regularly sized cans.
Part of the calculation of the size of the box and its associated cost is a logistical calculation which includes both manufacturing and transportation costs. From the article:
"This change also allows more efficient truck loading leading to fewer trucks on the road and fewer gallons of fuel used, which is important in both reducing global emissions as well as offsetting increased costs associated with inflation."
Depending on the trucks they have, the number of trips they need to make, the size of the boxes, and how much the boxes cost, a change in size (either larger or smaller) can affect manufacturing & transportation cost, which affects profits. If the cost of wheat goes up, the calculation changes, and they may need to change the box size in order to reconfigure their transportation - until the cost of wheat goes down again, when they will re-calculate and potentially resize again.
Also it's worth noting that "reducing global emissions" is not a lie or excuse. These companies really are making changes directly due to their new goals of reducing emissions. Sometimes that will result in less-than-stellar changes, like smaller boxes, or crappier packaging, or something else. It can be very hard to separate "consumer exploitation" from the externalities of competing goals.
More likely if the cost of wheat goes up, they shrink the size of the box, and when the cost goes back down, they increase their profit margin.
The costs of cereals vary widely, which leads to fragmentation, which leads to logistical and operational inefficiency. They may even prefer to take a loss on this cereal to increase size if it affords them efficiencies across their whole product line.
If you haven't noticed it in the past, try thinking about the opposite effect: all of those temporary labels claiming "20% more". Quite often, that is the company restoring the package size in order to avoid them becoming noticeably smaller with time.
FWIW, Consumerist called it the "grocery shrink ray". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerist#grocery_shrink_ray attributes is to Meghann Marco in 2008.
Here's a link to one copy at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/hensteethhorsest00goulrich/page/... .
This never went away and now we have 90g chocolate bars (down from 200g) and you can find toilet paper rolls with as little as 10m.
Some supermarkets will give you the unit price to help you compare.
I also love this, you can actually quickly make a better decision on what is worth.
It would be interesting to see if UK decides to drop this law as result of brexit.
I believe they are all required by law to do that. (What, of course, doesn't mean that they all do, but you should be able to get them a fine if you call your local PROCOM.)
Perhaps we can create some new, arbitrary unit of weight will be created, like ib, Ib, llb, ld, etc. that looks like a typo and tricks my mind into thinking I am getting a deal on a pound (lb) of ground beef when I am actually buying less of it. Bonus points if the unit of weight is not constant, fluctuating week after week based on market conditions, maybe tied to some new digital currency.
But the lord controlled the legal measures and would adjust the length of a foot, volume of a gallon, and weight of a pound as suited the conditions. The measurements would consequently vary between one feudal domain and the next, as well as over time.
This is why the metric system, which promised standardized, invariant, and universal measures, was hailed as a win for the people during the French Revolution.
https://www.cooksillustrated.com/articles/1875-why-you-shoul...
Please don't conflate us (you, me and most people in general) with those who actually do this. I certainly wouldn't do this and the idea that it's "us" really is kind of insulting.
We might be one humanity, but we're not equally responsible for all the shit, lies and hypocrisy that happens.
Thank you.
Some stores (like WalMart and Costco) make this very easy, and I pick the cereal with the best $/unit price.
What I hate is when I'm shopping on Amazon and it's one for $5, or get a pack of fifty for $7. There's no way I'm ever going to buy the one at such a price disparity, so I end up with a house full of 48 unused items.
Step 2 is now show gin a picture of a Closed bottle of vermouth
That’s when you true acceptance has been achieved.
I ended up giving them all away that year with the Halloween candy. Told every kid to take one along with the candy. Accompanying moms kept giving me a thumbs up.
Likewise, my wife tends to freely give out stuff on our local buy-nothing group (though honestly we don't tend to do mass purchases anymore).
If the majority of the cost of selling cheap things on Amazon is fixed (Amazon stocking fees, carrier fees, etc) then the actual profit to the seller on the $7 item is probably higher than it is on the $5 item. They know very few people will buy the $5 individual item; it exists to make the higher priced, higher profit item look like a bargain.
(Smirks in ginormous 40 oz. bag of Malt-O Meal Cocoa Dyno-Bites)
But I guess this would be too much - air quotes - re-gyu-lay-tion for the US.
On the flip side, go to a Family Dollar and you'll find tons of items that cost a buck in near-full size packaging with a fraction of the product you would expect from such a package.
Isn’t this actually a healthy thing? People should drink Coca Cola in more moderate quantities.
Double check the expiration date.
Either adjust the price accordingly, or be forced to put a big red sign with something like "Now with 10% less content (compared to before DD/MM/YY)".
Even better, products should have their key content-size metric on the box, very visible, normalized by the price. E.g. XX/ounce.
If the retailer makes a discount or changes the price, they should add a label with their changed price YY/ounce.
Which can be difficult / inconvenient!
Sometimes it's the 10-pak that's cheaper per unit. Sometimes it's the 20-pak. Different products may not be directly comparable. Different varieties of the same product category might appear at two or three places in the same store, not counting end-caps.
I'm guessing this was introduced as a law, in good faith to help consumers make more informed decisions, but I doubt the majority of numerically challenged consumers take advantage of this information.
For example, all pricing labels in-store will have prices like the following, from their weekly ad:
Price per weight only partially solves the problems... lots of products aren't directly comparable in the first place. For example, 100g of product X is not like 100g of product Y. It works well enough with things like raw ingredients (flour, oil, etc) but even once you are talking about things like cereal, jams, mayonnaise, etc. it starts to break down. It also doesn't work well with meat.
Small mom and pop kind of stores don't always have it. But a "proper" grocery store will always list per weight here.
Today, we have inflation, we have plenty of money, but we're running out of raw materials.
https://reason.com/2012/06/01/more-stealth-inflation-shrinki...
I remember the 1/2 gallon square boxes of ice cream.
The tubs now make it less messy but the point still stands. Secret inflation.
https://sites.google.com/site/atenveldtcooksguild/redactions...
I love the tiny cans of soda now available in US supermarkets. They're all I buy at this point. But if they were being sold for a dollar a can at the 7/11, I would be pissed.
That’s not a big conspiracy, or a trick being played on anyone, it’s just a reality of the economy.
Of course it’s not a conspiracy, it’s just deceptive marketing. I can accept that a hamburger that cost a dollar 20 years ago shouldn’t still cost a dollar. My preference for how to deal with it is raising the cost, not offering an inferior product. Other people might prefer to just get less for their dollar (or whatever currency they use where you are).
> it’s just deceptive marketing
As long as they print the net weight or quantity or whatever on the packaging I'm a-ok with it.
Option 1: They keep the amount and increase price. This makes consumers mad and prices consumers out of the market.
Option 2: Shrink the amount of product for sale. Consumers are less aware and won't get upset as easily. Consumers get less, but this also ensures that consumers still can get anything at all and not be priced out.
This system is flawed to its core. No form of money has survived it. Thankfully, Bitcoin exists now and is the most sound form of hard money the world has ever seen. This is the system I participate in.
Well, that is because of quite obvious reasons. People write arbitrary conditions into debt contracts like 5% interest just because. When it turns out that those interest rates were unsustainable they have to be lowered or the contract has to be extended. It would be nice if this happened automatically... Well, that is how inflation works.
The only alternative is to pretend that instead of money earning more money it loses you money and the way you protect yourself is by loaning out money to people who use it to purchase durable goods. Instead of being surprised that you lost money you will be surprised that you gained more money than expected.
>This system is flawed to its core. No form of money has survived it. Thankfully, Bitcoin exists now and is the most sound form of hard money the world has ever seen. This is the system I participate in.
And here we replace the flawed system with a system that has the same flaw except this time the decline happened before the system that it replaced declined... Bitcoin as a medium of exchange has already failed, meanwhile the USD and EUR are still chugging along fulfilling their original purpose albeit with less efficiency.
Austrian economists will talk about positive time preference being ingrained into human nature which justifies positive interest but honestly, that's just not the kind of human I am. I have a negative time preference. It really feels like they are trying to force their own world view onto other people to justify questionable practices for the sake of living up to stereotypes. It's almost like an emperor justifying his legitimacy.
Hard money is foolish and extremely short sighted. Money is effectively a promise that someone else will work for you. It is the ultimate durable good in a non durable world. People escape the real world and flee into a fictional balance sheet in the name of economic safety. When Bitcoin goes up in value, who contributed to that success? Of course future participants. Positive time preference means your greatest achievements will always be in the past. Short term thinking no longer becomes detrimental because it is the optimal strategy. As Bitcoin earns positive interest (lets say it is going 20% up in value every year) people will destroy real wealth as early as possible so that they can buy Bitcoin and then earn the 20% interest. The question is, if you are tearing apart real wealth, where are those price increases coming from?
Burning down the rain forest and farming for 3 years becomes optimal and a fruit orchard bearing fruit for decades becomes obviously suboptimal. If it takes 10 years to the first harvest the productivity of your orchard has to be 6 times higher than the rain forest strategy to purchase the same quantity of Bitcoin. Each subsequent harvest becomes less valuable as Bitcoin rises in value.
Of course this is a very contrived example. What's happening today is that students throw their student loans into speculative assets like Bitcoin in the hope that they don't have to finish college and get a job.
What I mean by negative time preference is that I would prefer to be the fool that runs the orchard than be the genius that destroys the rain forest. I would finish my degree, knowing that I would have to work. The reason I have this mindset is that I do not believe that a balance sheet creates value beyond what exists in the real world. The balance sheet is only useful in so far that it helps create value in the real world. Hard money plays into the desire to not have to create real value. It plays into the idea of creating wealth from nothing. Bitcoin is basically monetary alchemy.
I’m betting not.
The US economy led the world in the post war period until the mid-2000s. Our potion sizes were internationally known to be much larger. (We were sometimes derided for the Big Gulp.)
Now we're approaching European and Asian sized cereal boxes. Tiny, less expensive cars are popular. More people are renters...
The wealth and low hanging fruit are draining out of the US and onto the rest of the world.
It's fascinating to watch. A lot of people don't seem to notice.
Are you sure? From what I see, SUVs are on the rise, which are anything but tiny and inexpensive.
No idea where you have this idea from - reality is they’re tanking
> Most subcompacts were out of production by the end of [2019]
I have had a few iPads over the past 10 years, and most of the usable useful apps that I used to use are now unavailable due to killed backwards compatibility.
Or, if they are usable, most have been replaced by subscription service based versions (which would never make sense to purchase for tasks I do so infrequently).
I miss the early days of iOS and all the simple apps released for a $1 that did one thing well and ignored feature bloat. Those days are gone.
Hopefully we are at a stage now where apps made today will run for a 100 years…
Actually, that would be a good wager: at what year will an iOS version be released wherein apps that are subsequently released will be available to mankind, without update, for 100 years.
They largely died when the OS added all of those one things. No one is paying $1 for a flashlight app or a reminders app anymore.