The Incredible Shrinking Doritos Bag - Why You're Paying the Same for Less
- added August 13, 2008
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Big companies are protecting profits with subtle repackaging, putting a little less into boxes of cereal, containers of ice cream, rolls of paper towels and other products. Guess who's paying for it.
Does it seem you run out of Doritos, orange juice or mayonnaise faster than you used to?
Your mind is not playing tricks on you.
Slammed by the skyrocketing costs of agricultural goods and energy, many companies are quietly shortchanging their customers by putting a little less into bags, jars and boxes.
"We are tightening our belts," PepsiCo (PEP, news, msgs) chief Indra Nooyi said in a company conference call last week. PepsiCo recently reduced the amount of Tropicana orange juice you get in a large container by 7%, from 96 ounces to 89 ounces. Bags of Doritos, also made by PepsiCo, have been trimmed by as much as 2 ounces.
PepsiCo is not alone in subtly cutting size as a substitute for raising prices. Kellogg (K, news, msgs), General Mills (GIS, news, msgs), Unilever (UL, news, msgs), Wm. Wrigley Jr. (WWY, news, msgs) and Procter & Gamble (PG, news, msgs) have quietly trimmed the amount of cereal, ice cream, chewing gum, paper towels and toilet paper you get. (See the slide show.)
Legal -- but sneaky?
This is perfectly legal as long as companies don't lie about how much they're putting into packages. And they don't do that.
But how many time-starved consumers will notice that a box of cereal holds 8.7 ounces instead of 11 (as has happened with Kellogg's Froot Loops)? Consumer advocates say it's sneaky to put less in a similarly sized package without announcing it loudly.
Companies, of course, don't do that either.
"It is a sneaky way to pass on a price increase," says Edgar Dworsky, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general for consumer protection who is now editor of Mouse Print, a Web site dedicated to tracking what the fine print on consumer products "taketh away."
"If companies are going to do this, they need to be transparent about it and let consumers know," agrees Chris Waldrop, the director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America.
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So is it deceitful to charge people for less than what they are used to or should people be paying attention to what they buy?
Does it seem you run out of Doritos, orange juice or mayonnaise faster than you used to?
Your mind is not playing tricks on you.
Slammed by the skyrocketing costs of agricultural goods and energy, many companies are quietly shortchanging their customers by putting a little less into bags, jars and boxes.
"We are tightening our belts," PepsiCo (PEP, news, msgs) chief Indra Nooyi said in a company conference call last week. PepsiCo recently reduced the amount of Tropicana orange juice you get in a large container by 7%, from 96 ounces to 89 ounces. Bags of Doritos, also made by PepsiCo, have been trimmed by as much as 2 ounces.
PepsiCo is not alone in subtly cutting size as a substitute for raising prices. Kellogg (K, news, msgs), General Mills (GIS, news, msgs), Unilever (UL, news, msgs), Wm. Wrigley Jr. (WWY, news, msgs) and Procter & Gamble (PG, news, msgs) have quietly trimmed the amount of cereal, ice cream, chewing gum, paper towels and toilet paper you get. (See the slide show.)
Legal -- but sneaky?
This is perfectly legal as long as companies don't lie about how much they're putting into packages. And they don't do that.
But how many time-starved consumers will notice that a box of cereal holds 8.7 ounces instead of 11 (as has happened with Kellogg's Froot Loops)? Consumer advocates say it's sneaky to put less in a similarly sized package without announcing it loudly.
Companies, of course, don't do that either.
"It is a sneaky way to pass on a price increase," says Edgar Dworsky, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general for consumer protection who is now editor of Mouse Print, a Web site dedicated to tracking what the fine print on consumer products "taketh away."
"If companies are going to do this, they need to be transparent about it and let consumers know," agrees Chris Waldrop, the director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America.
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So is it deceitful to charge people for less than what they are used to or should people be paying attention to what they buy?
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