How can you lift the piece of a product in the most hidden way possible? Leaving the price the same, but reducing the amount of product in the pack. It is a phenomenon known as shrinkflation, an English term that combines the concepts of "contraction" and "inflation".
Some examples proposed today by the newspaper La Stampa: for the same price, cans shrink from 33 to 25 ml, toothpaste tubes from 100 to 75 ml, toilet paper rolls from 250 to 230 tears, 10 to 9 pieces, rice packs from 1 kg to 850 grams.
Shrinkflation has exploded in Britain alongside Brexit. After the referendum in which the British said goodbye to Europe, the pound collapsed, causing the cost of British imports to soar. As a result, inflation accelerated and companies had to work their imaginations to persuade the British not to cut consumption too much. This is where the idea came from: not to fatten prices, but to put products on a diet. Obviously, the trick works better the more the reduction of the packages is imperceptible.
The phenomenon is also present to a lesser extent in Italy, where "it seems to have a negligible impact on the estimate of general inflation but a significant one for some product classes", explains Federico Polidoro, head of statistics on consumer prices at Istat, emphasizing that in any case the Institute of Statistics takes shrinkflation into account "to prevent it from influencing the measure of inflation".
According to Istat surveys, since 2012 there have been around 1.400 products that have seen their packaging shrink, in some cases not only at the same price, but even with a higher price.
From the point of view of the consumer, the most effective defense is the maximum attention to the indications of the quantities on the packages. An operation that is not always easy, just think that the unit of measurement for the dimensions of the handkerchiefs is their surface once opened and spread out on the table.
