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'You're not imagining it,' ONS tells shoppers
For all those shoppers who feel chocolate bars, cartons of drink, toilet rolls and countless other products have been getting smaller, now comes official confirmation. A grand total of 2,529 products tracked by the Office for National Statistics have decreased in size over the past five years.
In an analysis of the phenomenon known as “shrinkflation”, the ONS explores whether these dwindling portions are making life more expensive. The theory goes: if a chocolate bar gets smaller but the price stays the same, that is a form of inflation because you are paying more per bite.
The issue has regularly made headlines over the last year after the decline in the value of the pound following the Brexit vote. Food manufacturers have blamed the slump in sterling for increasing the price of imported ingredients and looked for ways to recover their extra costs.
Toblerone, owned by Mondelez, spaced out its signature triangles so that there was less chocolate in each bar. Mars has shrunk its sharing bags of Maltesers by 15%. Doritos have downsized from 200g a packet to 180g, Peperamis have lost 2.5g and are now 22.5g and a big box of Coco Pops has been reduced from 800g to 720g.
Of the total number of products that have got smaller, 2,006 were food items. Items that particularly stood out as having shrunk over recent years were bags of sweets, soft drinks, disposable nappies and toilet rolls.
Only 614 products increased in size, including crisps and hand-rolling tobacco, following a change in the law requiring pouches to contain a minimum of 30g of tobacco.
The ONS assures the public it catches this form of inflation because its hundreds of price collectors around the country always check the size of an item as well as the price when they are gathering information for each month’s inflation figures.
Using its data, the ONS has now summed up recent size changes, highlighting food as particularly prone to shrinkage. But it is only in the very sweetest sub-category of “sugar, jam, syrups, chocolate and confectionery” that downsizing is having a noticeable effect on the official inflation figures.
James Brown, a partner at the firm Simon-Kucher, which advises companies on pricing strategies, said the downsizing made sense. “You don’t say: ‘I want to consume 120 grams of chocolate.’ We say: ‘I want a chocolate bar that costs 75p or less’,” he said.
“Shrinkflation is actually quite a successful tactic because a lot of shoppers are more sensitive to a price change than to a weight change.”
With manufacturers facing higher costs for energy, ingredients, transport and packaging costs, he predicted more shrinkflation to come.
Summing up its findings, the ONS said: “No, you’re not imagining it – some of your favourite sweets really are shrinking. In November 2016, Toblerone chocolate bars reduced in size by about 10%, provoking outrage online. And Maltesers, M&Ms and Minstrels have gone the same way.
“But it’s not just chocolate bars. Over the last few years, journalists have found examples of loo roll, coffee, fruit juice, sausages, beer and chips getting smaller without getting any cheaper.”
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ing-youre-not-imagining-it-ons-tells-shoppers
