Unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure you know what inflation is, and how it's affecting your quality of life.
Day by day, it seems like we watch the erosion of our buying power across a wide spectrum of products and services, and there's no end in sight. What's worse is that the media offers up news reports that state a rate of inflation that seems completely disconnected from the reality of daily life, as we actually experience it.
The suppliers of these goods and services are usually pretty well aware that customers are only going to stand for so much before there is sort of a general uproar and people stop buying, or at least slow down their consumption rates.
And so they employ a variety of methods and trickery to try to deceive consumers rather than being obvious about raising their prices.
Being too obvious about a large price increase often leads you to be accused of "greedflation" which is the practice of increasing prices by substantially more than your productions costs have gone up, and writing it off as "inflation is high!" Hopefully people will just shrug and not pay attention enough to complain about a 28% price increase during 10% inflation. Right?
Maybe you're familiar with the concept of "shrinkflation," the practice — usually seen at grocery stores —selling something in what looks like the same packaging but reducing the contents by a few percent or even 10% while keeping the price the same.
I watched that happen with cooking oil not so long ago, where the typical 32 Oz. bottle suddenly became 28 Oz. instead. The bottles look identical when you walk down the supermarket aisle, except for the fact that it's a little shallower, front to back. Very clever, and you don't really notice the slimmer profile unless you're really paying attention.
A particularly devious version of shrinkflation — which I've watched at our local grocery store — might be actually best named as a different kind of inflation because instead of shrinking the product, the manufacturer simply changes all their bag sizes so you're unable to "compare apples to apples" anymore. It's like small, medium and large being replaced by economy, family and jumbo size and none of the sizes having the same contents as before. Normally this masquerades purely as "packaging redesign."
To further put a smokescreen in front of the consumer's eyes usually such changes done through a process of the grocery store allowing existing supplies to completely run out and the store shelf actually will be empty for a week or so. Then, when it's restocked, it's with all the new sizes and new packaging so you really don't have a visual basis for comparison. Sneaky, sneaky!
Another kind of inflation I just encountered it today at our supermarket — although I have seen it before — is the practice of discontinuing the lower end brands completely from the shelves and only offering more upscale products, perhaps replacing the budget brand with a premium brand.
I was trying to buy our usual quart size container of plain lowfat yogurt and I just couldn't find it at all. In fact, the space for plain lowfat yogurt in the quart size container had been completely removed from the refrigeration shelf, and replaced by an more upscale Greek yogurt brand. So, instead of paying $2.50 for our usual container of yogurt, the cheapest alternative was now $4.49. And the slot formerly occupied by the $2.50 containers had been filled with a premium $6.99/quart variety. Again, all I can say is sneaky, sneaky!
We allegedly live in this era of prosperity, thanks in large part of automation and improved manufacturing processes... but whan was the last time you actually saw the price of a product go down, other than because it was on sale?
It's a small wonder that fewer and fewer households here in the USA feel "financially secure."
Anyway, the point of this story is that inflation isn't always obvious; much of the time it's either hidden or disguised by smokescreens designs to make us — as consumers — be asleep to the reality of what is happening around us.
Stay awake, folks!
Curator Cat, January 22nd, 2024