Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum Here, pardon the personal question, but
Speaker 1: have you noticed that you're going through rolls of toilet
Speaker 1: paper faster than usual? There's a good reason for that.
Speaker 1: A toilet paper rolls are shrinking. In the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, major brands have reduced the number of individual
Speaker 1: sheets on each toilet paper roll. The packages still contain
Speaker 1: the same number of total rolls, but each role is slimmer.
Speaker 1: Sharman's Mega roll shrunk by seven point a, Kirkland Signature's
Speaker 1: rolls dropped by ten point and Angelsoft's Mega Roll plummeted
Speaker 1: by reduction. However, the manufacturer said that it thickened the
Speaker 1: sheets at the same time. So but while there are
Speaker 1: fewer sheets per role, the price per role has remained
Speaker 1: the same. Welcome to the infuriating world of shrink flation.
Speaker 1: Shrink Flation is a simple economic concept. Inflation rates are
Speaker 1: high around the world right now, which means manufacturers are
Speaker 1: facing higher prices for raw materials, ingredients, packaging, shipping, and more.
Speaker 1: To continue to make the same profit, companies have two options.
Speaker 1: Either raise the price of their products or charge the
Speaker 1: same price for less of the product. Brands know that
Speaker 1: consumers are price sensitive, a meaning that they're likely to
Speaker 1: notice when the price of a frequently purchased item like
Speaker 1: toilet paper goes up. But what kind of consumer would
Speaker 1: notice if their meta rolls of toilet paper were just
Speaker 1: eight per thinner, especially if the packaging and branding were
Speaker 1: otherwise unchanged. One Edgar dwarf Ski would notice a dwarf
Speaker 1: Sky is a consumer lawyer and the genius behind the
Speaker 1: consumer advocacy websites consumer World and mouseprint dot org, where
Speaker 1: he maintains a long list of products that have fallen
Speaker 1: victim to shrink flation. For the articles episodes based on
Speaker 1: hos to work spoke with him. He's been tracking shrink
Speaker 1: flation for decades, but says that there was a rash
Speaker 1: of products that shrunk due to manufacturers grappling with record
Speaker 1: high inflation. Recently, the CEO of Kellogg claimed that when
Speaker 1: his company makes a product smaller, they also lower the price,
Speaker 1: but dwarf Sky has identified hundreds of examples of brands,
Speaker 1: including Kellogg's Keebler line of cookies, charging the same or
Speaker 1: more for smaller products. Dwarsky said no company would go
Speaker 1: through the increased cost of retooling their manufacturing plant and
Speaker 1: redesigning the package. If they just didn't exact proportional drop
Speaker 1: in the number of ounces in the price, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make financial sense. Some product categories are much more likely
Speaker 1: to fall victim to shrink flation. These include paper goods
Speaker 1: like toilet paper, paper, towels and tissues, as snack foods
Speaker 1: like chips, crackers and cookies, breakfast cereals, and cleaning liquid
Speaker 1: and shower products like dish soap, shampoo, and moisturizer. According
Speaker 1: to a poll by Gardner from June, of American consumers
Speaker 1: said that they'd stop buying a brand that implemented shrink
Speaker 1: flation to cut costs. If that's true, then brands across
Speaker 1: the board might want to watch out. For example, Arm
Speaker 1: and Hammer laundry detergent shrunk from seventy to sixty seven
Speaker 1: and a half ounces while still promising fifty loads of laundry.
Speaker 1: A Quaker instant oatmeal quietly reduced its boxes from ten
Speaker 1: packets of oatmeal to just eight, reduction for the same price.
Speaker 1: The Folders Instant coffee shrunk from fifty one to forty
Speaker 1: three and a half ounces, while still advertising up to
Speaker 1: four hundred cups of coffee per container, Gatorade, which is
Speaker 1: always come in thirty two ounces, that's one Court Bottles
Speaker 1: introduced a new bottle with a tapered at all that's
Speaker 1: only twenty eight ounces for the same price. And Briar's
Speaker 1: ice Cream, like many other ice cream brands, hasn't sold
Speaker 1: a proper half gallon or sixty four ounce container in years,
Speaker 1: but Briar's is now sold in forty eight ounce containers,
Speaker 1: which is just a court and a half of product
Speaker 1: that's less than the original. If all this is starting
Speaker 1: to give you a headache, it won't help that will
Speaker 1: Leave is now selling ninety pills per bottle instead of
Speaker 1: a hundred, and General Mills shrunk its entire line of
Speaker 1: family size breakfast cereals and packaged them in slimmer boxes.
Speaker 1: Dworsky said, frankly, I don't know how some of those
Speaker 1: cereal boxes on the store shelves even stand up anymore.
Speaker 1: There's almost no footprint. However, he also pointed out that
Speaker 1: it takes a very specific type of consumer to spot
Speaker 1: shrink flation, because manufacturers aren't going to advertise that fact.
Speaker 1: Now slightly smaller, he said, the only way to know
Speaker 1: if your product has shrunk is to know the size
Speaker 1: of the products you buy regularly, and to double check
Speaker 1: when you go to the store. And it doesn't help
Speaker 1: that brands are doing everything in their power to divert
Speaker 1: consumer attention away from a product's actual net weight or
Speaker 1: sheet count. And not only do old and new packages
Speaker 1: look almost identical, but they employ marketing terms like family
Speaker 1: size and mega size that don't have any real meaning.
Speaker 1: If you notice that your favorite product is shrinking, your
Speaker 1: only real option is to compare its price with competitors,
Speaker 1: including store brands. To do that, don't look at the
Speaker 1: retail price because even competing products come in different sizes.
Speaker 1: A Dwarsky says that you need to look for the
Speaker 1: unit price, which is the price per ounce or pound
Speaker 1: or gallon. That's the only way to make an apples
Speaker 1: to Apple's price comparison. As a general rule, though, store brands,
Speaker 1: that is, generic brands are the last ones to downsize,
Speaker 1: and their qualities usually just as good as the store brands,
Speaker 1: so it can be great substitutes. And Dwarski said to
Speaker 1: watch out for words like new and improved on a
Speaker 1: package label. This might just be a tip off that
Speaker 1: the packaging has changed or the product amount is less,
Speaker 1: rather than any real improvements being made, but in rare cases,
Speaker 1: a downsized product will upsize again. A Costco shoppers were
Speaker 1: so upset that Kirkland's signature brand paper towels shrunk from
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty sheets per roll to a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty sheets that the company quietly restored the towel
Speaker 1: rolls to a hundred and sixty sheets or one for
Speaker 1: the consumer. Today's episode is based on the article why
Speaker 1: shrink flation has you paying more for less on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com, written by Dave Roose. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Playing.
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