Another bullshit answer from someone who thinks products reach the stores by growing wings and flying there for free.
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16 years ago
When a gallon is not a gallon
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16 years ago
I dont' think so. Sorry.
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16 years ago
It's more than transportation costs. If a supplier were to raise prices
20%, the consumer may not buy the product but go to a competitor. Keep the packing the same in looks but smaller in size and keep prices close to what they are, the consumer will grab the package without thinking of increased cost. The vendor wins. The consumer thinks he/she is getting the same goods at the same price.Now that fuel costs are rising, we'll see more price increases, but the smaller packages have little to do with it..
It's a marketing and a way to increase profits.
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16 years ago
Now that they're rising? I deal with trucking groceries all day long. Freight costs began rising 4 years ago. I'm surprised that price increases have lagged so far behind. It had to happen eventually.
The OP describes it as an attempt to fool people. That's bullshit. What kind of work do you do? Do you expect to get salary increases from time to time?
This reminds me of a long debate in a cooking newsgroup, in which whiners were complaining that Breyers had shrunk their 64 oz ice cream package. This was portrayed as evil. Some of the idiots seemed to expect Breyer's to send a post card to every household in America, informing them of the change.
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16 years ago
advertising and packaging
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16 years ago
re: A pound of coffee is about 9 ounces. 5# of sugar is 4#.
I'm sure you meant to say "Some containers of coffee are 9 ounces" and "Some bags of sugar are 4#"
When I walk into a coffee shop and ask for a pound of coffee, I get 16 oz. When I go to the public market and ask for a pound of sugar, I get
16 oz.Are some stores selling 9 oz of coffee for the same price as they used charge for a pound? Sure - but they don't call it a pound. What's the big deal? Prices have gone up. Anybody that's "fooled" by the marketing ploy of downsizing the containers and keeping the price the same is just that - a fool. If you need a pound of something, buy a pound of it.
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16 years ago
Packaging: Already done. The new size is printed on the labels.
Advertising: You think manufacturers should pay for ads informing customers of shrinking sizes?
By the way, does paint depend on any petroleum-based raw materials?
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16 years ago
re: A pound of coffee is about 9 ounces. 5# of sugar is 4#.
I'm sure you meant to say "Some containers of coffee are 9 ounces" and "Some bags of sugar are 4#"
When I walk into a coffee shop and ask for a pound of coffee, I get 16 oz. When I go to the public market and ask for a pound of sugar, I get
16 oz.Are some stores selling 9 oz of coffee for the same price as they used charge for a pound? Sure - but they don't call it a pound. What's the big deal? Prices have gone up. Anybody that's "fooled" by the marketing ploy of downsizing the containers and keeping the price the same is just that - a fool. If you need a pound of something, buy a pound of it.
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These complaints come from people who think they should get regular salary increases, but nobody else should.
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16 years ago
re: a pound of gold is only 12 ounces
Apples and bananas, sort of.
A troy pound of gold is 12 troy ounces, while an avoirdupois pound of gold is 16 avoirdupois ounces, but gold is never measured in avoirdupois ounces, so a pound of gold is indeed only 12 ounces. Damn
- I just made myself dizzy!
It's kind of like a dollar only equals a dollar if we are talking about the currency of a single country. e.g. US$1.00 CAN$1.00
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16 years ago
Yeah, I just bought a salami at Sam's. If was labeled "Yard of Beef," but was only 18" long!
When I pointed this out to the check-out person, he said: "It's a short three feet."
I think that was a line from the movie: "The Night They Invented Burlesque."
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16 years ago
And "A pint's a pound, the world around."
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16 years ago
A pound of gold has only 12 ounces.
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16 years ago
That's already been pointed out...and replied to.
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16 years ago
This is simply your friends at the big box store helping you...
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16 years ago
I doubt the poster thinks that at all and they gave an excellent analogy. If he is painting a room and his cost goes up does he doesn't paint 80% of the surfaces and try to spin it somehow that it is really a great job. He would charge more to do the expected job.
I expect the same with products I buy. If the cost to produce goes up then charge more. Don't shrink the size and print weasel words on the package such as "new package but contents will perform as the old package etc..."
I for one am tired of big box and megacorps putting so much effort into spin.
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16 years ago
Then we're back to the heart of the matter: If you ran a paint company, how would you inform customers that the cans no longer contained a gallon?
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16 years ago
Here in Canada, paint used to come in Canadian gallons, 160 ounces. When we went metric they downsized the cans to 4 litres. Now we get paint in US gallons which is smaller again, reduced in size to allow for adding tints. I still have an old 160 ounce can, it towers over the tiny US gallon cans we now get.
PS: The price per can never went down, only up.
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16 years ago
And a barrel of oil if 40 gallons instead of 55. We took a screwing on that barrel.
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16 years ago
The problem occurs as soon as one - just one - major company downsizes it's package and keeps the price the same. Next, right or wrong, every other company sees that their product is priced higher, and does the same thing - thinking that all shoppers are ignorant enough to simply grab the product with the lowest price without even looking at the unit pricing. (maybe they are...)
Bottom line - If you shop by unit pricing, you don't care if the container is 16, 13.5 or 9 oz. If they are all $1.22 an oz, then the only question is "How much do I need?" I could care less, from a price perspective, if the bag of coffee I bought yesterday was 16 oz and today it's 14.5. If it was $10 yesterday and it's $10 today, they raised the price and my 16 oz bag would have cost more - which I would have noticed because the unit price went up. I laugh in the face of the corporate marketing muckety-mucks who think they "fooled" me into thinking they didn't raise the price.
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16 years ago
One exception that immediately comes to mind is what happened with yougurt. All the big players, like Dannon, etc reduced the size of thier single serving cups. Little Columbo Yogurt, once a family owned business and later a tiny divison of Genmeral Mills, responded by running TV ads pointing out that Columbo yogurt was still the same size it has always been, while it's competitors were all shrinking.
They grabbed a lot of market share!