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.”
Shrink flation is a form of price gouging because it’s deceptive.
Before inflation hit I bought the same brand of chips for over a year. The company both raised the prices and reduce the size of the container.
Effectively raising the price on me twice while hiding half of the price increase.
Once I saw that they had reduced the size of the bag of chips by 20%, and had tried to price gouge me, I switched to a different brand of chips.
Some inflation is going to happen naturally and I accept that. But this was not natural inflation where corporations had to raise the prices. It was greed.
The initial price increase was enough to cover inflation. The rest went to shareholders. If the price increase had been fair, they wouldn’t have hid it behind shrinkflation.