“Shrinkflation” has taken the world by storm, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon. Shrinkflation is the act of decreasing the size of a product, but keeping the same price. Officials say that the reason why they do this is that “consumers are more likely to notice the increase in price than the amount of product ‘lost’ when packages shrink”. But some products such as Charmin Ultra Soft have shrunk so much that it has become noticeable, and it is causing outrage in the public. 

It has been getting so bad that some stores in France have started taking matters into their own hands and putting warnings on products to inform customers when a product’s contents have gotten smaller without a corresponding price decrease. The director of client communications at a Carrefour store states, “Obviously, the aim in stigmatizing these products is to be able to tell manufacturers to rethink their pricing policy.” This can lead to more stores adopting this strategy and it might be able to slowly wipe out shrinkflation. Many companies will keep decreasing the product as much as they can without consumers noticing, and probably won’t bring back the bigger sizes unless they get called out.

Even some of the most well-known brands such as Pepsico, Nestle, and General Mills have been shrinking their products year after year. Officials say that brand loyalty has been plummeting due to this epidemic and many consumers have been switching to other brands. For some companies, shrinkflation has actually backfired! For example, Charmin Ultra Soft had to bring back their ‘Mega’ sizes when customers began to notice the size changes. Sadly, some officials say that there is a good chance that most changes in quantity will be permanent.