{"id":57642,"date":"2021-05-02T06:46:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T11:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57642"},"modified":"2021-05-02T06:46:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T11:46:18","slug":"how-costco-is-masking-a-14-price-jump-with-shrinkflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57642","title":{"rendered":"How Costco Is Masking A 14% Price Jump With Shrinkflation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Costco Is Masking A 14% Price Jump With Shrinkflation<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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The oldest trick in the retailer book is back.<\/p>\n

We have previously written about shrinkflation – the “creative” masking of higher prices whereby retailers sell a materially lower amount of products for the ‘same’ price, covering up what is often a significant price increase on a\u00a0“per unit”\u00a0<\/em>basis (see “”Shrinkflation” – How Food Companies Implement Massive Price Hikes Without You Ever Noticing<\/a>“, “Shrinkflation Hits The UK: Toblerone Shrinks By 10%, Price Stays The Same<\/a>“,\u00a0Shrinkflation Intensifies \u2013 Stealth Inflation As Thousands of Food Products Shrink In Size, Not Price<\/a>), and we have a feeling that in light of the recent surge in commodity costs and food prices, we will be writing about it a whole lot more in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Take Costco, which as The Bear Traps report notes, is now charging the same price for paper towels but the roll has 20 fewer sheets. TBT refers to a recent post in a\u00a0Red Flag Deals\u00a0<\/a><\/em>message board, where a member makes the following observation:<\/p>\n

Costco paper towels. Same price as the previous several times buying them. Now with 20 fewer sheets.<\/em><\/p>\n

140\/160= .875<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

The stealthy decline of 20 sheets per roll of towels from 160 to 140 for the “same price” is the functional equivalent of 14.3% inflation, and as TBT notes, “In our experience, only potato chip companies can get away with selling a half empty package.”<\/p>\n

Of course, once companies realize they can get away with such shrinkflation – and they will because as a RFD member responds…<\/p>\n

I tried telling the clerk at Costco about this, and they said \u201cwho cares, it\u2019s just 20 sheets.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Will be the typical response.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Costco Is Masking A 14% Price Jump With Shrinkflation The oldest trick in the retailer book is back. We have previously written about shrinkflation – the “creative” masking of higher prices whereby retailers sell a materially lower amount of products for the ‘same’ price, covering up what is often a significant price increase on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[29126,426,19241,15461,4318],"class_list":["post-57642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-costco","tag-inflation","tag-price-increases","tag-shrinkflation","tag-zerohedge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57643,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57642\/revisions\/57643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}