How to camouflage price increases?

[martien007]

incredible but true ! soon: there will be packaging and nothing in it:

AFP the 23 / 09 / 2008 10h44
Food: processes to camouflage price increases

Change of packaging, modified recipes, reduction in content: food manufacturers, anxious to preserve their margins, use various processes to camouflage price increases, notes the magazine "60 million consumers" to be published Thursday.

You have to "be a damn wise consumer" to notice these practices, underlines the monthly. Even official statistics are struggling to detect them, adds the magazine of the National Institute of Consumption, which will launch Thursday an observatory of "masked inflation".

At a time when most French people are struggling to make ends meet, the magazine explains in its survey, citing brands, the processes most frequently used to boost prices "without it being obvious to the customer". One of the most used is the reduction of the product.

The magazine mentions Lu's "Prince" cookies which weigh only 300 grams against 330 before the summer. Danone's Jockey has also reduced the quantities: 850 g of cottage cheese against one kilo or the small pots now at 90 g against 100 g previously.

Mars chocolate bars had the same idea a few months earlier, the monthly notes.

"At the beginning of the year, everyone thought about anticipating increases in raw materials "such as wheat and milk, says a product manager in the agri-food industry, cited in the survey." On some products, decision was taken to change the grammage rather than increase the unit price", he adds.

Another strategy is to change the packaging, a process that "opens the way to very nice increases for the customer," says the monthly.

Chewings-gums sold at Aldi under the Feel Free brand went from 13,75 to 20,73 euros in their new packaging. The monthly also cites the manufacturers of powdered sugar whose packaging is now 750 g plastic sachets or even Lesieur olive oil, long conditioned in liters, which has been flanked by a little sister of 75 cl in 2006.

The third method, "possibly the most pernicious", is recipe modification. This involves replacing expensive ingredients with less expensive raw materials or changing the composition to lower the cost price. The monthly specifies that the changes in recipes seem to be "above all the prerogative of the first prices or the hard discount".

"In general, there is only a price increase when there is a change in recipe, so when there is added value to the product", Jean-René Buisson, president of the Association, told AFP. National Food Industries (Ania).

According to Mr. Buisson, who says he is "reluctant on the quality of the surveys" of the magazine of the INC, consumers "are extremely vigilant to the variation of prices but they agree to pay more for products which have a real added value or a nutritional value higher "than that of the previous product.

Contacted by AFP, the Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD) had not commented at the end of the afternoon on this INC investigation.

[Christophe]

Hey!!! Long live the automatic checkouts (scanning and weighing of products BY the customer) to further improve "these practices" ... or on the contrary to fight against !!

Indeed; after a few weeks, we can do stats with these boxes which add the real mass parameter for all products.

As the product title (therefore its theoretical mass) is also contained in the bar code: we can compare manufacturer data and actual data!

We can see the thing in 2 ways (a little Manichean but good ...):

a) the seller is WITH the customer to provide the best quantity, quality and price ratio. This means making these PUBLIC stats to the INC or UFC What to choose for example.

b) the seller is WITH the supplier by not making public any cheating on the labels.

Definitely it's magic these new cases!

I think that a law should be passed so that point a) is favored.

[Gregconstruct]

When we say that we have to read the packaging labels ...

[Leo Maximus]

By taking a bread from Auchan I found that it was very light. It was a country bread in ball of 400 grams in packaging. I'm not the type to deflate so I'm going to weigh it in the fruit and vegetable department, result it weighed 280 grams! I then returned to the bakery department, I called the manager and pointed out to him that I found this bread a little light, he replied unpleasantly that a 400 gram bread weighs 400 grams. As I offered to go and weigh it, he went to get the department manager, to whom I asked how the grams of Auchan could be lighter than normal grams. Without saying anything, extremely embarrassed, the department head went to weigh the bread, he asked for another label and gave me back the bread with apologies from Auchan.

Ugly bread is common, people just let it go.

[Gregconstruct]

People don't let it go! They don't care, that's all!

[Christophe]

By taking a bread from Auchan I found that it was very light. It was a country bread in ball of 400 grams in packaging. I'm not the type to deflate so I'm going to weigh it in the fruit and vegetable department, result it weighed 280 grams! I then returned to the bakery department, I called the manager and pointed out to him that I found this bread a little light, he replied unpleasantly that a 400 gram bread weighs 400 grams. As I offered to go and weigh it, he went to get the department manager, to whom I asked how the grams of Auchan could be lighter than normal grams. Without saying anything, extremely embarrassed, the department head went to weigh the bread, he asked for another label and gave me back the bread with apologies from Auchan.

Ugly bread is common, people just let it go.

What is this mess? Next time I do the same thing as you!

There is only one solution in this case: UFC WHAT TO CHOOSE

[Christine]

Or simply an employee who made a mistake in the labels. An error that has been rectified: stop seeing conspiracies everywhere. In addition, if it had been the other way around, I bet no one would have complained because it's well known, customers never cheat.

[Gregconstruct]

Hehehe ...

They are a bit paranoid ...

[Christophe]

Or simply an employee who made a mistake in the labels. An error that has been rectified ...

Rectified? On a loaf yes not on the shelf ... but I may have misunderstood Leo's explanations ...

[Gregconstruct]

It would surprise me indeed that they have rectified all over the department!

Now, maybe Leo was just on the wrong number.