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Shrinkflation is affecting virtually every product we love or used to love. A lot of people probably felt it this Christmas shopping for cookies and other items.
I'm on diet so I usually don't take chocolates, cookies and other biscuits unless it's a celebration like Christmas or Valentine's Day. I didn't bother to buy those famous Christmas chocolates but when I did, boy was I surprised.
This group of newscasters told the story better.
Eating chocolates on Christmas is more of a tradition for me but I had to skip this year and the ones I bought, I had to share with my siblings. Thanks to Shrinkflation, it was so small it wasn't even enough to go around.
One of the newscasters said as a child it used to be selection boxes, plenty of chocolates and really wasn't that expensive. You'd have to spend a lot to be able to get those things today. The bottom line is most companies are ripping customers and consumers off.
Is there anything we can do about it, to maybe stop it? Short answer, no.
The companies responsible for bringing these products are in for one objective, making money from the profits of their sales to us the consumers. Should something happen which affects their profit margins in a negative way, they use Shrinkflation to keep being on profits.
So it's either we're getting less of their product for the same price or they're going out of business and they'll always choose themselves over us and that's why nothing can be done except the end user's own decision to not buy anymore and move on to another product or compromise and buy more if money is not a problem.
You may have heard of the famous tea brand, Tetley. The company reduced the quantity of tea in its teabags in 2015. The reason was that they where affected by the quickly increasing price of tea, from about 2 dollars to 4 dollars per kg. So for them to be able to maintain their prices, they had to reduce the content of teabags by 30% and also maintain brewing time and quality.
You can think about it both ways. They're making us spend more money but if it's a product where over consuming will cause health issues, like sugary foods or sweets, it's a good thing because a lot of people are forced to take less.
