The idea behind the word “shrinkinflation” is to indicate there are companies that manipulate the consumer by altering the content of its products instead of adjusting the prices according to inflation. It’s a similar strategy to the one used by governments when they collect money but instead of doing it with taxes, they hide it by printing money and devaluating the currency as a result (my country Venezuela is the worst example right now with inflation around +1000% yearly this year).
This phenomenon is very easy to observe and prove, and even though there will always be doubts about the real intentions of the companies behind this type of strategies, by the way they do it, I believe there is a clear interesting in giving less while maintaining the illusion of giving more or at least, the same.
I think this started as a measure in order for this companies to be able to offer the same product at the same price in spite of inflation, however this went on and ended up becoming a way to lower the costs and increasing the benefits.
A good example of this is this chocolate I am sure we all know, Toblerone.
It used to be a Swiss brand bought up by Cadbury (a British brand), and some years ago Cadbury was acquired by Kraft (an American brand) which is a company known for applying shrinkinflation to its products lines, lowering the quality abruptly, changing ingredients, everything in order to lower the production costs squeeze more of their customers money.
I am sure must of us know Toblerone has an iconic design with pyramids and valleys.
Check the new Toblerone design and compare it with the original one.
As you can see, the valleys are so wide that it looks like a place where you can park your bicycle.
It’s evident... because if they reduce the regular size of the bar people will clearly see they are receiving less for the same price. But if instead of doing that, you leave the package with the same size and reduce the chocolate content inside the package, they would be selling less product for the same price without the customer knowing. This way you can easily reduce about 10% of the product without decreasing the price.
Sadly, this is not the only alarming case of chocolates being the victims of shrinkflation.
Their most popular chocolate: "Dairy Milk” was also redesigned. It used to be a rectangular bar with little blocks with a rectangular shape. The new design has rounded edges, ergo they cut all the corners of the little blocks and now, just as with Toblerone, they are selling less product for the same price.
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