SHRINKFLATION EXPOSED: How Companies Secretly Increase Profits 

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I hate this world. Nobody cares about anyone. Money is the only thing that matters to people

This does suck for essential goods, but everything that Pepsi and Coca-Cola make is not essential. Stop buying that garbage and help them "be competitive."

You should make a video about insurance companies' greedflation. It is particularly egregious because in many instances having insurance on something is either a per-requisite or mandatory.

Marketing literally just boils down to "how can we lie effectively and get away with it"

Notice these companies have record profits and still feel the need to increase prices

What pisses me off is when companies destroy inventory and/or throw it away in locked dumpsters rather than donate it, even non food items such as clothing. All just so the poor can’t get/use it.

2019 Coding josh, 2022 Career woke Josh, I’m ready for the next arc

Ive just gone on a complete consumer strike. If I dont need it to survive I dont buy it. I have never been more free.

I'm amazed people are still buying processed foods in 2024. The only processed food I ever buy is a frozen pizza, a few times a month. I've definitely noticed the greedflation/shrinkflation with them and assumed people noticed it with everything else.

At some point we need laws to address this, This should be illegal

Its not shrink flation no more its now skimpflation and greed flation at this point

Shrinkflation is not uncommon as it started in the late 90's and early 2000's. I really noticed it with Dial soap bars in 2005. They started shaving the center of the bottom of the bar out for less soap at the same price. Then, they raised the price in 2006.

"Oh no, we might only make $30bn this year, we must raise prices or else we'll be poor!" is essentially their mindset.

Why not mention harm to environment, producing two bottles filled in half instead of normal one.

I noticed this crap right away as I cook all our meals in this house. When you lift an unopened box of something you always lift and it is lighter, you notice. I am fighting back by not buying the shrunken products as much if possible and making more by scratch in the kitchen. My RU-vid recipe video list is in the hundreds at this point!

Any advertisement tries to distract you from the weak point, ironically, highlighting the weak point. "Eat Fresh" = Our vegetables are old and mushy. "Save 100s" = Spend thousands of dollars. Whatever it advertises, like, read the opposite.

Food companies: "The weight loss drugs are making them buy less snacks!!!" No, no. Lack of money is the reason why I cut out my one Pepsi a week.

CEOs being greedy, who would have thunk

This has been going on for decades. The only difference is these days companies don't even bother to try and hide it anymore. Probably because with the help of good people like you keeping track of these things and letting everyone know. Unfortunately we're all so beaten down that we just shrug and go on with our day.

Gatorade at gas stations went from 32 oz to 28 oz and they filled them less. Welcome to America!

If we gonna do this, let’s talk about fast food restaurants doing surge pricing

Around 2008 it was NOT that they had raised the price on a box of diapers; it was that they had also LOWERED the quantity by 4 at the same time. Has gone on for some time now.

The customer has the power to put a stop to this money grab, all they have to do is STOP BUYING!

Love this channel! These corporations are simply criminal!

This is because our culture doesn’t punish dishonest conduct because we all want to reserve the ability to be dishonest ourselves, otherwise it would stop.

Blame consumers for the problem. Accepting the scam. lazy.

Europe also is affected - i myself resorted to choosing one single, especially cheap line of products and only buy these and nothing else _(if possible)_ . There are "good" manufacturers out there which ignore shrinkflation trends - go and find them and *stick* to them. We all need to support proper businesses

I fail to see how raising prices makes you more competitive. If a soda is 1$ and its competitor is 2$ then the 1$ one will sell more

"Making them more affordable" "So you're decreasing the price to make-up for the smaller packaging?" "...not like that"

Know what can’t shrinkflate? Whole foods. Cheaper to buy potatoes and meat than potato chips and microwave meals.

fun fact, where i live, below the 'per item' price of usually foods but sometimes other things, there is a 'per liter' or 'per kg' price, that is normalized. This way you always know if the actual price of the item has gone down or up, regardless of portions.

Those chocolate boxes fill up the landfill 😢

I have a friend who loves when companies do this. He really believes companies do this stuff because they care about the consumer.

This isn't nothing. Wait until the "we got you by the balls because you're so depended" rate hikes are the accepted new norm.

People need to pay attention smh 🤦 .

The concept of shrinkflation doesn't have a simple "answer" in the traditional sense. It's a term used to describe a phenomenon where companies reduce the size or quantity of a product while keeping its price the same or increasing it. From a consumer perspective, being aware of shrinkflation can help make more informed purchasing decisions and be mindful of changes in product sizes or quantities.

DAMN! I've always been disappointed with how much extra space there is in cereal bags and chip bags, but.. COME ON, Honey Bunches of Oats! "I've got an idea! Let's give them only HALF a bag's worth of cereal and see if the the pleebs notice!😏😈" "AAAND... we could tell them to eat CEREAL FOR DINNER!" "BRILLIANT!"

Tillamook Ice Cream did this too

Lack of competition.

The thing is companies stock is determined by future growth. Once a company reaches market saturation either by buying out competition or simply providing quality good/service there is no more growth. It impossible to get more customers if everyone who can be a customer is a customer so the only way for the company to maintain stock value and/or grow is to lower the quality of said good or service. Like a crack dealer selling the good stuff to get you hookered and given lower quality later knowing they got you for life.

I have a good one. Seapak now sells fake shrimp and they stuff the entire breading with tufu. GROSS

Candy bars, Twinkies, Pop Tarts (thinner), even Levi's (fabric thinner on preshrunk styles). On some products - the ones which are not simply a quantity of some uniform item or substance (e.g., Gatorade) - shrinkflation yields an inferiror product, not merely Less of it (e.g.., the new skinny Pop Tarts taste weird, and thinned-out Levi's obviously wear out faster, and fit differently, etc.).

Inflation is a direct result of gov't printing money, not necessarily corporate greed. Corporations, however, instead of being transparent are playing games with shrinking products and hiding behind buzz words. Never work for a company that has a stock ticker. Your job will ALWAYS be tied to the stock price, not your performance.

The honey nut one had it's fill line marked on the box.

exellent video on corp greed

It’s the same with governments more taxes less social benefits and returns. We as consumers and constituents need to voice and fight back to this financial rape.

Haven't bought muffins from one of the grocery stores lately but glanced at them on my way out. They used to be 6 to a pack but now are 4 for a slightly higher price than before. been noticing this more and more in the past couple of years where prices will stay the same or go higher with less being provided.

I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.

I think it’s time for our government to start regulating publicly traded companies. Greed is far too out of control.

Yes! Call out the cheaters, scammers, bullies -- any and all slimeballs that do nothing but drain the life out of humanity.

See Tim Gurner's remarks about making us all feel more pain and reminding us that we work for oligarchs. 😅

And here I am wondering who ever buys this crap in the first place.

People notice this, stop buying the product, company notices lower income from sales and raise their prices or cheat on the weight ... rinse and repeat ...

Also while laying off huge amounts of staff …

This isn't new. The snickers bars in in the impulse isles at grocery stores got a half-inch shorter between the time I was going to the store with my mom as a toddler and the time I started going by myself after school. I'm 30. I noticed this like 15 years ago.

Yep, reminds me to mention that for Europeans Costa coffee gave staff a 9% pay increase but passed the cost onto the customer. Now every coffee is the same size but a quid more expensive. It's not even great coffee at any of these chains.

In my country the shampoo companies seems to have changed format of bottles all at once to a smaller one, keeping same price. Not only that, the supermarket i go to changed the height of the shelf floors (they can easily be moved up and down through pre-placed holes) to make it more subtle. But we had the old bottles. The old ones were 400ml, these are 300. This is insane.

Here is how this needs to be empirically evaluated: The companies claim this is about the cost of the product. I doubt it. For example, cans of seltzer are now sold in 8 packs rather than 12. The new 8-pack is more than the 12-pack was 5 years ago. Carbonated water is something that is so cheap that I doubt the cost of producing it has any impact on the price. Also, I doubt the cost of the aluminum cans, and labor to manufacture or distribute has a proportionate impact on the price either. However, from the company's perspective, they assume that demand is inelastic and that people will just pay more for less. Also, given the price appreciation even if demand is elastic and people consume less given that the price hike is so much the company will still see more profit per unit sold. It would be nice to see cost accounting and marketing people research this. I seriously doubt these price hikes on consumer goods have anything to do with increases in real prices.

Alot of prepper channels cover this, we are getting gyped

Fluke, is that an wedding band on your hand? 😁

we all took our eyes off corporations.

CEO bonuses are expensive. How else is a company supposed to recoup this cost?

I was better off in 2019 on food stamps than in 2024 working for my food

here in my country, our god dammned government did something good for once, and made a law that shops must put a warning on the price tags, if the product got smaller for any reason.

Yeah when companies triple their profits and people can barely get by, what's that phrase, the math ain't mathing.

EXCELLENT presentation

They get away with it because people buy it. Stop rewarding their malpractice with your money.

These companies have become their own worst enemy.

Honestly... all the products that are going through shrinklation are not products you need... Instead of spending money a soda, tiny boxes of cereal and tiny bags of chips... Buy farm fresh and whole foods.. those are not currently going through "shrinkflation". Drink water... You'll be healthier and save money.

The solution is simple. Stop buying these companies products when they increase the price or are giving you less for your money. That's exactly what I do. They will have no choice but to lower the price again to increase their sales.

Just f the dollar and use gold. Inflation doesn't happen with gold. There ya go

Couldn't have anything to do with the Government constantly printing money.

You'd think they would save money by not using unnecessary packaging

"Makibg them more affordable." Yes, affordable for them. Not for you. Ditching most of the "food and drink" PepsiCo puts out is the key to keeping healthy too.

excellent video. I am totally aware of these tactics, but as I do not buy a cereal and chocolates, chips, etc. I was not aware how bad it was getting. I know about it with shampoo and stuff. I also moved from the US to Albania, so we don't have as much of that crap here. Something they do in Albania though: They sell you the good toilet paper at cheaper than the other kinds, but the inner cardboard roll is about a 3rd bigger than the more expensive ones. I fell for that one time. Flip the extra dollar for the more expensive 10 pack. ;-)

Its not inflation, if there are record profits.

If you think it’s bad now….wait until they start piling on carbon taxes.

I don't know if the Fabreeze Air line is the only ones to do the about half full bottles thing, but after I bought a number of twin packs of those, I noticed a full one feels much lighter than the aerosol fresheners in metal cans, and not just by the weight of the container materials, the gross weight feels so much lighter. I was wondering if, since it's a common thing around here, mostly limited to Wal-Mart, customers were using products and not buying them, I flipped it to check since the bottom is better visibility with the dimmer lighting I have to work with. I'm even finding wet food products sold in plastic bags now to also have air in them rather than having a vacuum seal on them since a thin plastic bag is much easier to pierce than a tin can or glass jar and I don't like that because I have to spend a minute or two smelling to gauge if it's possibly from bacterial contamination, but a lot of harmful bacterium don't produce gases with odors, like with salmonella and E. Coli, so it's still a gamble. And since some of those plastic bag wet foods are, like some I bought earlier today foods I haven't had before, I don't even know how to tell if the food spoiled before expiration date besides odors, I could tell being from mold growth or visual signs of contamination. -> My uncle once had a bad angle on a deer or elk he killed, and we had to cut a lot of bad flesh out and even through away some we packaged and later was able to see and or smell the contamination. Don't eat the green meat.

People themselves can bribe their politicians but that is too much of a stretch

This is not a secret. This has been going on for decades 😂😂😂

Joshua doing good work for society.

the EU government has forbidden the word "shrinkflation" in the media. if you cannot talk about something, then it doesn't exist.

Pretty simple to see greedflation in general. If a company raises prices genuinely because of inflation, their profits at the end of the quarter/year, shouldn't be too different then the previous period that it is compared to. If, however, a company reports a significant rise in profits, then they just used the moment as an easy cash grab. Simple as that...

I'm fed up of it😡

This been going on for at least 15 years.

There is only one word to lable this crime - THEFT!! Out and out theft!! Disgusting. With ALL the products. Bags of chips, toilet paper, tissues, soft drinks, snacks sizes, etc. EVERYWHERE

The once 1 liter coke is now sold for same cost just shrink size. Same with the cans from 8oz to 6oz. Charging same cost just smaller.

Indian government did something good for this. Now, companies need to print per gram cost at the packaging label as well. No need to do mind calculations all the time. Off course companies still do false marketing, but at least it's easy for an informed person to see through stupid marketing.

As things shrink and prices keep going up I find myself buying less and less.

The bottle is not full for a good reason, you need the gas to make the pressure for it to shoot out the nozzle!

years back probably 10 or so.. my mouthwash could easily be bought for less than $6 per liter.. that same mouthwash today.. almost $9, definitely 'greedflation'

I don't drink or eat garbage so I'm safe.

You finally notincing this? This was rampant when W Bush was president. Some coworkers and I used to go to a chinese restaurant once a week and I would get sweet and sour chicken I started noticing more plate showing so I started counting the nuggets every week, from that time to the end of Ws second term it was down by a third.

When I went to purchase some laundry detergents and bleach the other week I was so pissed off at what I saw. What used to be 1 gallon of Clorox bleach was now 3.74 quarts. That's not even what pissed me off was that it cost nearly $9. 9 F-ing dollars, and it wasn't even a full gallon! 10-15 years ago 1 full gallon of even name brand Clorox bleach was $1

Raising prices _is_ inflation. Raising prices literally causes inflation.

Can’t we just start some businesses that have good products and don’t charge high prices like that? We need more competition, specially in beauty products, is pretty much all the same company with different brands

Surprisingly I went to a the grocery store yesterday. I was going to grab Coca-Cola, but I saw doctor pepper was 10 cents cheaper so I grabbed that.

if we want to make em pay we have to stop buying their products

Good video, Josh. Hey what kind of chair do you have? I need a new one 😢