And our regional supermarket chain's store brand of Yogurt still comes in 8oz. cups. That's what we buy for ourselves, but my MIL -- we do her shopping -- insists that she has to have Yoplait, which costs more for only 6oz.
Perce
But wouldn't it be more honest just to raise the price rather than reduce the size?
Perce
Percival P. Cassidy wrote: ...
But, it is a competitive market.
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Nope. It heen been 42 gallons since the late 1800's. That a barrel for other purposes is 55 gallons is irrelevent.
There's the problem: It depends on how each manufacturer perceives its customers. In this newsgroup, I've seen a couple of people say they couldn't stomach the idea of paying $22 per gallon for paint. There's your Home Depot/Wal Mart shopper. Me - I go to a specialty paint store and pay $30+ for Devoe or Martin-Senour because I hate painting and I only want to do the job once and be done with it.
If a paint manufacturer is worried about their price scaring people away, which type of shopper are they thinking about? Certainly not me.
I wonder whether there are states without decent Weights and Measures Departments. If so, the "gallons" of gas people buy there are probably a pint or three short as well.
Perce
Not at all the same thing -- the gallon is dispensed as a volume measurement whereas the container on the shelf is labeled as to its weight/volume.
It's nothing fraudulent at all, simply a marketing decision in a competitive market.
Read the label, make your purchasing decision.
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Due to higher manufacturing costs we will raise the price of our paint by 4% on March 1. Thank you for your continued business.
And where would you post that info?
Utter nonsense. A pound is sixteen ounces. Five pounds is five pounds, not four. If you buy a bag of sugar that is _plainly_marked_ "4 pounds" thinking it is five, you need to be looking in the mirror for the source of that problem.
True, but it happens more often that you'd think. As a whole, consumers are not very bright. Marketing people are winning.
I don't begrudge a price increase when needed. The reason for the change was profit by deception.
Breyers (and others) took a deceptive way out of raising prices. Ice cream has been in 64 ounce containers for 60 years that I'm aware of and prices have risen as cost have risen. It worked that way for a long time. Suddenly the marketers found they could scam a lot of people into thinking they are getting the same product for the same price. No matter how you look at it, the purpose was to raise prices, not help the consumer. Egg cartons, thankfully, still have 12 eggs in them.
Annoying is shrinking the packaging. Evil is reducing the contents but leaving the package size the same in the hopes that consumers won't notice. Ice cream falls in the annoying category. Manufacturers of tuna, potato chips and quite a few other products fall in the evil category.
I wouldn't reduce the size of the package - I'd raise the price. But paint is a poor example, because except for the tint bases previously discussed, the majority of paint is sold in full gallon containers.
Gold is measured in Troy and is 12 Troy ounces.
The lb we know and love is measured in Avoirdupois.
1 Troy pound = 13.1..... AvoirdupoisDick
The two cans of Pittsburgh we got recently came labeled as 3 7/8 quarts and "White/Pastel Base." The one we had tinted would have come a little closer to the full gallon (if it did not in fact reach it), but the one we wanted left as plain white (untinted) would still have been 4oz. short. All the other bases presumably had to have tint added, but not the White. The store ads. gave the price per gallon. The label they stuck on the tinted one said "Gallon."
Perce
It is still dishonest no matter how you look at it. I am quite capable of reading labels. A short quantity non-standard packaging is simply wrong. A quart should be a quart. Not 28 oz "at everyday low prices". Ironically it is everybody's friend the big box store (they tell us that frequently so it must be true) that is behind this.
My buddy works for a company that manufactures packaging equipment. One of their customers asked to have a "4 up" line installed. Usual packaging for their product is "6 up" or a six pack. The reason was because walmart had decided they could screw their customers thinking that people wouldn't notice that the canned items were in a 4 pack and think their buddy walmart was helping them with "low everyday prices". It didn't work and the supplier took a serious hit because of the money they had to spend on the line.
You could have had the store add 4oz of white tint...
re: It is still dishonest no matter how you look at it.
How is it *dishonest* if the package is correctly marked as to the amount of product it contains?
re: I am quite capable of reading labels.
Then what's the issue? You read the label, you know how much is in the package and how much it costs, you make a decision as to whether to buy it or not. Next!
re: A short quantity non-standard packaging is simply wrong.
What's the standard? If you are referring to the de facto standard that certain products have always been packaged in certain amounts, then look up the definition of de facto. It's an agreed upon standard, not anything legal. If everyone packages ice cream in 56 oz packages from now on, that will eventually become the de facto standard.
re: A quart should be a quart
A quart is a quart. 28 oz is 28 oz. Please give us an example of a product that is labeled as quart but only contains 28 oz.
I've said it before and I'll repeat it here in case it was missed:
If you shop by unit pricing, it doesn't matter if the package is 28 oz or 32 oz. You're paying for what you're getting - no one cheated, no one lied. They simply raised the price by charging you the same amount for less product - but they clearly informed you of the price increase by posting the unit price on the shelf right next to the product.
If you were the CEO at Breyers, how would YOU have instituted the price change so it was not a "scam"???
You run the company, and people will do exactly what you say, no questions asked. Describe your plan.
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