In Norway, we have a law that says grocery stores have to give two prices, one for the product, and one for the product in a compareable size, like 1litre or 1kg for easy comparison. This safeguards againt shrinkflation.
In America grocery stores pretend to do this but
switch the units on nearby items to confuse consumers. (e.g. name brand will have price/oz, store brand will be price/g)
Probably happens elsewhere too, I like to think it's malicious but maybe there's a reason.
It's malice.
Shrinkflation still happens, you just get to watch two numbers go up now.
The whole idea by shrinkflation is to hide it from the consumer. By having compareable size standard, you see them doing this. So, no, in this example you only see one price go up. The item price stays the same (since the item size/ammount went down), but the comparable price went up AND you can see it.
This is true but do you remember the liter price you paid for laundry detergent or do you remember that you bought it for $14?
I'd wager that most people are in the latter, even if they are completely informed of shrinkflation.
For me the liter price I use when trying to figure out if a sale of the 1 gallon is actually cheaper than the 2 gallon normal price (or whichever units of measure for an item).
Some stores in the USA will list price per oz on the whenever applicable, which is nice, but sadly just a store policy not any regulation.
It also depends on state legislature I believe. There was a customer that came up to me to tell me our signage was incorrectly detailing the price pr. oz or the product oz. (can't remember which now) and I never quite understood why he cared so much. But apparently businesses can get fined or dinged per incorrect signage they have so?
This seems to be everywhere in Canada. Though annoyingly some products won’t share the same unit. Toilet paper tends to either be shown per roll or per foot and makes it difficult to compare.
In Norway, we have a law that says grocery stores have to give two prices, one for the product, and one for the product in a compareable size, like 1litre or 1kg for easy comparison. This safeguards againt shrinkflation.
In America grocery stores pretend to do this but switch the units on nearby items to confuse consumers. (e.g. name brand will have price/oz, store brand will be price/g)
Probably happens elsewhere too, I like to think it's malicious but maybe there's a reason.
It's malice.
Shrinkflation still happens, you just get to watch two numbers go up now.
The whole idea by shrinkflation is to hide it from the consumer. By having compareable size standard, you see them doing this. So, no, in this example you only see one price go up. The item price stays the same (since the item size/ammount went down), but the comparable price went up AND you can see it.
This is true but do you remember the liter price you paid for laundry detergent or do you remember that you bought it for $14?
I'd wager that most people are in the latter, even if they are completely informed of shrinkflation.
For me the liter price I use when trying to figure out if a sale of the 1 gallon is actually cheaper than the 2 gallon normal price (or whichever units of measure for an item).
Some stores in the USA will list price per oz on the whenever applicable, which is nice, but sadly just a store policy not any regulation.
It also depends on state legislature I believe. There was a customer that came up to me to tell me our signage was incorrectly detailing the price pr. oz or the product oz. (can't remember which now) and I never quite understood why he cared so much. But apparently businesses can get fined or dinged per incorrect signage they have so?
This seems to be everywhere in Canada. Though annoyingly some products won’t share the same unit. Toilet paper tends to either be shown per roll or per foot and makes it difficult to compare.