Are you aware of Shrinkflation?

[nikrobi]

Have you already percepted how products and services are suffering changes in their prices? Oh, but it's normal, it's inflation, the market demand, etc.
By this point that's allright! Although, recently, not only prices have called our attention, but the fact that they are disproportionate to the amount, content, time, weight, size, etc, anyway, services and products have being modified deliberately. We could say widely opened adultered to profit more by spending less to produce or serve. Despite customers receive less, they are paying more cause the price is readjusted due the human perception in relation to the label, fact which explore mass products and services, taking advantage mainly of the ones who have mathematics quantitative difficults, that are the great part of the consumer society.
Would it be the dark side of Free Market?

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[Gyfts]

Deceptive marketing has always been there. People complain that they receive less product for more money, so the alternative is to charge the same amount while reducing the size or amount of the product. Not so much a dark side of the free market, more so taken advantage of consumers that aren't wise enough to look at the unit price.

[teosanru]

More than Economics it's about sales and marketing strategy. When any company wants to keep it's pricing competitive to it's substitutes and also keep it at a whole number figure, this is the best strategy for them. I have been seeing a packet of Maggi since my childhood. One packet of Maggi Noodles is Rs.10 in my country for almost more than 15 years now. But the weight of one pack has gone down from 100g to just 65 grams now. They have tried to keep the pricing the same to give the feeling that Maggi is still available at the same price at which you brought it in your childhood but actually things have changed a lot. This isn't the dark side of anything. Every company needs to keep it's pricing accurate I don't feel this is unfair to the consumer as they know what they are buying.

[Poker Player]

Yes, I was aware. I think the first time i realized about it was during the 2008 crisis when I saw certain supermarket products giving less quantity for the same price. Typical of a bag of potato chips that is more full of air than potatoes, and things like that.

[magneto]

This is something that seems to be completely overlooked by the general public.

And this is also something that most CPIs will lie to you about - they only take into account the price of consumer consumer staples but fails to include any deterioration of quality or quantity of the goods in question.

In that sense, inflation is still a real risk. People simply don't realise it enough to act on it with rationality, it seems.

[Kamarah]

Have you already percepted how products and services are suffering changes in their prices? Oh, but it's normal, it's inflation, the market demand, etc.
By this point that's allright! Although, recently, not only prices have called our attention, but the fact that they are disproportionate to the amount, content, time, weight, size, etc, anyway, services and products have being modified deliberately. We could say widely opened adultered to profit more by spending less to produce or serve. Despite customers receive less, they are paying more cause the price is readjusted due the human perception in relation to the label, fact which explore mass products and services, taking advantage mainly of the ones who have mathematics quantitative difficults, that are the great part of the consumer society.
Would it be the dark side of Free Market?

I know shrinkflation is the process of shrinking items in size or quantity, or even sometimes changing the recipe or reducing quality while the price of the item above stays the same or increases. In other words, it is economic inflation. For example, before, a mask sold for a very cheap price. When there was a translation of covid19, the sellers pushed their masks up very high. Chili traders are buying, suddenly stop lowering the price of strenuous people...

[mersal]

Its happening all the time but now the changes are happening in real quick time and its something to play with the human psychology because when a brand increase the price for certain products it will decrease the number of people who are buying it so their strategy is to keep the price same as before while offering the kesser quantity so they can keep making profits and they will boost their products sales with new advertisements to hide the changes in quantity.

[20kevin20]

Yeah, this seems to happen everywhere around. Chips are a great example, at least here in Romania - new brands usually fill up their chip bags entirely and gradually decrease the amount in time while preserving the same price or even rising it. The typical answer to this question of why there's so much air in the bags is that "it helps preserve the chips" although I am quite sure that's not the case. Price changes are much more evident than taking away a few grams of your product instead, and it's almost always unnoticeable (or people think: "well, it's not that much").

[tyz]

Deceptive marketing has always been there. People complain that they receive less product for more money, so the alternative is to charge the same amount while reducing the size or amount of the product. Not so much a dark side of the free market, more so taken advantage of consumers that aren't wise enough to look at the unit price.

You're right, nonetheless, it's a kind of hidden inflation. If you get less quantity for the same price, then an entity of that quantity has become more expensive. Most people don't notice this and that's why companies use this way to maximize profits.

[zanezane]

Deceptive marketing has always been there. People complain that they receive less product for more money, so the alternative is to charge the same amount while reducing the size or amount of the product. Not so much a dark side of the free market, more so taken advantage of consumers that aren't wise enough to look at the unit price.

Well, the producers don't have any choice, the raw materials for their products get expensive so they have to portion control so they can still be up and running and profiting. The problem is that the inflation becomes uncontrollable to the point that it is unhealthy to the economy.

[electronicash]

the price goes up while the quantity of the product is less. looks like cheating the end buyers while they don't notice the grams. the terms probably are very common to the producers but for us, consumers will just accept it for there is nothing we can do about it.

kids will sure notice the quantity inside the Maltesers but they can't do this on products like sugar or flour since it's measured by weight. A kilo will always be a kilo.

[Coyster]

This strategy is applied cause it's harder to notice, price fluctuations are obvious, if it goes up or down, people are immediately aware, but when the content is different or altered, it becomes difficult to spot, only very few people actually check the weight or the actual content of the product they buy, they could have the premonition that it feels somewhat smaller, but only very few people will actually go back to compare the previous and the current content and weight.

Thus, that way the company is keeping majority of the customers somewhat happy, since they never increased the price, whereas what they are doing is still very much the same as a hike in the price of the particular item, it's basically just a marketing strategy, and still very much a product of inflation.

[so98nn]

Deceptive marketing has always been there. People complain that they receive less product for more money, so the alternative is to charge the same amount while reducing the size or amount of the product. Not so much a dark side of the free market, more so taken advantage of consumers that aren't wise enough to look at the unit price.

Exactly! We never see the units or measure the units if they are packed food, junk food and branded items which we buy on daily basis. In fact the trend for online shopping or E-commerce has increased a lot; in that case there is no valid option to check for the measurement (i.e. weight, shape, size to the accuracy). This could be manipulated way easily to concur the market inflation.

Nonethless, branded items always keep trying such stunts! 15% extra chocolate, 15% extra powder for example, but that is added to the total package not the raw material.

I think that's real shrinkflation. Nicely introduced by the way!

[slapper]

It depends on countries you living where monopoly is the main cause. It is hard to reshape the reality since people have already familiar with names, brands, packages. Moreover, big companies tend to by small one, making the market less competitive, less free

I live in a country where I believe the market is freely operate and thrive. Big companies do not want to buy small companies while small companies distribute more effective products. There are likely a millions of different activities flowing in and out.

So bitcoin maybe an escape path for people like you. Only it (maybe other cryptocurrencies, too) is able to hedge the inflation by the capped number of coins. Therefore, you will never be affected by the inflation and by the shady activities of the government

[Theb]

This is the best example I know and who can even forget about this one?

This is when Toblerone tried to reduce the weight of its chocolate product by redesigning their chocolate bars and tried to reason out that this will make it easier to cut into pieces but the whole community was enraged and they were laughed at for the obvious attempt on making their product cheaper for their cost while not increasing their price. I have other examples in mind but I guess this is the most popular one I could think off and maybe you will remember this as well.

[TheGreatPython]

Although, recently, not only prices have called our attention, but the fact that they are disproportionate to the amount, content, time, weight, size, etc, anyway, services and products have being modified deliberately. We could say widely opened adultered to profit more by spending less to produce or serve. Despite customers receive less, they are paying more cause the price is readjusted due the human perception in relation to the label, fact which explore mass products and services, taking advantage mainly of the ones who have mathematics quantitative difficults, that are the great part of the consumer society.
Would it be the dark side of Free Market?

Thanks for bringing our attention to this, I have always felt this is a situation that really needs to be tackled. I just don’t know why companies would increase the price for their products and at the same time decrease the quantity or quality, it’s really annoying. I have been seeing a lot of company products being done like this recently, prices goes up and the amount decreases, then what’s the need for the increase in price?

If they are going to increase the price of a product, then they should not alter the quantity, and if they are going to be reducing the quantity of the products, then they shouldn’t increase the price. We really need to start doing something about this. The problem is how to get everyone to agree to this.

[tygeade]

This has been a thing in my nation for nearly a decade. Unfortunately people prefer it this way instead of increasing prices as long as the price stays around the same, but even the price doesn't stay around the same and that is the problem. When you have lesser product but the same money that is the most opted one, when you have higher price but same product that is second best, but sometimes there is a slight increase in price and slight decrease in product and that is the least wanted.

People prefer either more reduction in item or higher increase in price, but not slightly less and more from both, that is definitely the worst. Inflation is not always the same in every nation, some nations have 1% or 2% while others have 5-10% and in that case it is hard to actually keep things at the same price, hence companies are going for things like this in the end.

[Ucy]

Ofcourse. Producers either have to Increase prices of goods and services, or maintain the prices while reducing the quantity/quality.
They typically do the latter to remain competitive and it's not always obvious especially when done gradually.

Won't be surprised if some do both (increase prices and still reduce the quantity/quality).
There are also cases of producers adding more yeast to bread, more water to wine or engineering agric products to make them bigger than they are supposed to be.

[YOSHIE]

Would it be the dark side of Free Market?

At a glance I read about the Theory that the OP mentioned regarding the current condition of the dark side of the market tends to have a concentration on products, goods, Prices are deliberately made to generate profits, in fact this will result in being dominated by a handful of people who develop their same product for trading.

If this happens often will result in a 'new geographic economy' of new products that have an impact on the Free Market.

This kind of theory has often happened in the free market, but it returns to us with the existing structure to avoid consumers experiencing big losses in this theory.

[Fortify]

Have you already percepted how products and services are suffering changes in their prices? Oh, but it's normal, it's inflation, the market demand, etc.
By this point that's allright! Although, recently, not only prices have called our attention, but the fact that they are disproportionate to the amount, content, time, weight, size, etc, anyway, services and products have being modified deliberately. We could say widely opened adultered to profit more by spending less to produce or serve. Despite customers receive less, they are paying more cause the price is readjusted due the human perception in relation to the label, fact which explore mass products and services, taking advantage mainly of the ones who have mathematics quantitative difficults, that are the great part of the consumer society.
Would it be the dark side of Free Market?

It can get even more devious than what you've shown us and can be incredibly wasteful. Think about easter eggs - sometimes the packaging is huge in comparison to the product, full of carefully constructed cardboard with large empty spaces inside. It takes a lot more unnecessary shipping space all through the process (increasing fuel pollution and inflated staffing costs elsewhere). Another particularly hard to spot trick they use is keeping all the packaging and even the price exactly the same, but removing one unit from the product to achieve the same effect, so instead of getting 6 weetbix you get 5 in the shrinkflated version. It even happens when travelling, airlines are constantly trying to rearrange the seating on their plane to trim extra centimeters from seats if allows them to squeeze another row in. The only way you can combat it as a consumer is to limit your buying experiences with companies who take these actions, I personally understand that stuff will slowly get more expensive and would rather pay more than get less.