The White Knights of Shrinkflation: Shoddy Goods 009

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Shoddy Goods time is upon us, and that means another newsletter from Meh about the stories behind the stuff people make, buy, and sell. And if you feel like you’re getting less of that stuff in each package, you’re not wrong: shrinkflation is a well-known, well-attested, well-loathed phenomenon. But Internet gonna Internet. Read on for some, er, courageous takes on the incredible shrinking groceries…

Everybody hates shrinkflation, right? That’s the practice of sneakily, stealthily decreasing the quantity of product in a standard package, in lieu of raising the price - or, worse, in addition to raising the price. A smaller loaf of bread, more empty space in a bag of chips, fewer washes in a bottle of laundry detergent. Sure, the executives who decide to do it probably thrink shrinkflation is genius. But everybody else can agree that it’s bullshit, certainly?

As it turns out, not quite everybody.

Isn’t your skin moist enough? Photo by Redditor yeetus_thyfeetus of tubs bought six months apart.

Shrinkflation and its nondiscontents

Pretty much since economist Pippa Malmgren coined the term in 2015, there have been shrinkflation apologists trying to gaslight us into thinking it’s good, actually. One of the latest and, frankly, weakest attempts comes from one Dr. Ernest Baskin of St. Joseph’s University.

He argues that shrinkflation actually doesn’t happen as much as people think, mostly in categories like household paper goods and snacks, but that “Because consumers buy groceries more often than any other type of transaction, they are more likely to notice changes in price or quantity when purchasing food.”

So shrinkflation isn’t a big deal because it disproportionately happens to the products people buy the most? That really the argument you’re going with, Doctor?

Besides, Baskin says, everything’s getting more expensive these days, from sugar to shipping, and without shrinkflation, “manufacturers would have no choice but to increase prices.” Uh, news flash: shrinkflation IS increasing prices. That’s what the “-flation” part is about. It’s just a way to raise prices so fewer consumers will notice.

Is it cynical of me to wonder if Baskin’s background as a marketing consultant for the likes of Pepsi and Big Pharma may have tilted his worldview a teeny-tiny amount in a corporate-friendly direction?

Then there was the hilarious defense of shrinkflation offered by Kraft Heinz executive Dominic Hawkins when he was called before the UK parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in March. Heinz put fewer beans in each can, Hawkins said, “to make it taste better.” Not exactly a raving endorsement for the quality of Heinz beans, is it?

Fewer beanz for your dollarz. Photo by Redditor mustery1.

Not all defenses of shrinkflation are quite that inept. The Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne and Jai Kedia apply that pro-deregulation think tank’s usual intellectual veneer to their thesis that shrinkflation is a false panic. While brushing off shrinkflation’s effect on the overall inflationary picture, they at least acknowledge that “shrinkflation is just a form of price increase.”

But they treat it as a neutral tactic, simply what happens when “some businesses will prefer reducing product sizes over raising prices directly due to perceived price sensitivity among their customers.” In other words, if customers clearly understood the cost calculation, they might buy something else, so “some businesses will prefer” their customers don’t notice the higher prices.

It’s the dishonesty, stupid

These contortions dance around the most obviously irritating thing about shrinkflation: it’s deceptive. And not accidentally. It’s a conscious attempt to intentionally mislead a company’s most loyal customers.

How do you know? Because if these smaller quantities were actually a response to consumer demand for smaller quantities, the manufacturers would give them corny names like “Fun Size” or “Convenience Pak” and make sure you couldn’t get through an NFL game or an episode of The Masked Singer without hearing about it.

The shrinkflation is coming from INSIDE THE ROLL! Photo by Redditor GeeFen of Costco toilet paper tubes bought three months apart.

As is obvious to those of us without research fellowships, shrinkflation exploits a basic fact of consumer behavior. Most people, after they’ve bought a box of the same cereal over and over, develop a rough idea of what “a box of cereal” is, and about how much they expect to pay for it. But not many of them could tell you how many ounces of cereal are in that box. Even fewer could tell you the going rate for that cereal by the ounce.

It’s easy to notice when your favorite box of cereal goes from $3.99 to $4.49. The shrinkflators intentionally make it a lot harder to notice that that old 14-ounce box now only contains 10 ounces of cereal, even though that’s a much bigger change. All you know is that the box of cereal that used to last all Saturday morning now runs out halfway through Thundarr the Barbarian.

To the pro-shrinkflation camp, though, you’ve made a rational choice as an informed consumer. Sometimes people just like to get less for their money, apparently. Unless you keep a spreadsheet of the per-ounce costs of all your groceries, the argument goes, shrinkflation is all on you.

No. Trust your feelings on this one. Shrinkflation is bullshit.

Public policy debates are one thing. But the shrinkflation pep squad wants to blunt the classic weapon of public shaming, too. I think the likes of Baskin and Cato are gonna need much better arguments to win that fight. Better yet, they could come over to the side of the consumers who are getting ripped off. But I’m not holding my breath. As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Whew, I’m all for the battle on shrinkflation, but maybe we could use just a touch of it in newsletter length, eh? If you made it all the way here, chime in over in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat!
—Dave

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