Less product, same price
Have you noticed there's less peanut butter in your jar? Some packaged goods companies have been reducing the weight of certain products and selling them for the same price. Sean Cole asks: Is it deceptive?
Elinor Mantin shops for groceries at Lorenzo's Supermarket in North Miami, Fla. (Getty Images)
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: When you go to the market for a weekly groceries run, you can count on certain things. You buy a gallon of milk, you get a gallon. A pound of apples is a pound of apples. But, without peeking now, how many ounces are there in a box of Fruit Loops? How about a package of Dial soap? The answer is "less than there were before." Companies are reducing the weight of some of their products, yet charging the same amount. Is this a subtle way to raise prices? Yes, definitely. Is it deceptive? Perhaps. Marketplace's Sean Cole reports.
Sean Cole: The poster product for this phenomenon is Skippy peanut butter. The regular-sized jar looks the same as always, until you turn it upside down.
Frank Luby: The jar used to have a smooth bottom. It now has an indentation, which takes as couple of ounces of peanut butter out of the product.
Frank Luby is a marketing and pricing consultant for Simon Kucher & Partners in Cambridge, Mass. He says that big dimple in bottom of the Skippy jar...
Luby: Allows them to keep the same price point. But you get slightly less.
Cole: I guess my follow-up question to all of this is "What the hell?"
Luby: [Laughs]
Cole: Like is that OK?
Luby: To be perfectly honest, I think it is OK.
With the price commodities going up this year Luby says shrinking containers might be the lesser of three evils. The other two being cheaper ingredients, which would change the taste of your peanut butter, or alienating even the most loyal consumers with higher shelf prices. Now, Skippy is made by Unilever, a food conglomerate that also put a dent in the bottom of Hellmann's mayonnaise and shrank your carton of Breyer's ice cream. No one there would go on tape but when I raised the deception question, a spokesman said the new weight is clearly marked on the package. And Frank Luby says the per ounce and per pound labels on the grocery shelf really help.
Luby: So, yes, it's deceptive. But I think it would be even more deceptive if you didn't have that level playing field that's created by the per ounce comparisons, which we can take a close look at when we go to the supermarket.
The supermarket down the road from his office.
Luby: And I wanna go look a the box of Total.
Total cereal. His brand.
Luby: I grab this box and this is relatively thin.
Cole: It looks really thin.
Luby: It looks really thin.
Whereas the face of the box is as wide as always. General Mills, which makes Total, told me it only shrank down some of its cereal sizes -- that the smaller ones are now cheaper, and that this is old news. And as Luby and I were checking out that famous dent in the Skippy jar...
Cole: How deep is that would you say?
Luby: It's probably as deep as a fingernail.
We got kicked out of the store.
STORE MANAGER: OK I can't have you doing any recording in the store or filming without permission from headquarters.
Cole: OK. Do you mind if I buy these?
STORE MANAGER: You can buy 'em, yeah.
So I went to the check out counter with two boxes of Total and a jar of Skippy.
Cole: Oh. $11.27. Wow.
Way more than I thought it was going to cost.
Cole: I'm whipping out two more dollars here.
All the money in my wallet. And Luby says that proves the point.
Luby: You're going to remember that that cost more than you expected and that's going to stick with you. But the package sizes, to the extent that you knew them anyway before you started working on this story, will continue to fade.
But I'm not so sure. Because I went to another grocery store, bought a bunch of downsized items and did a little show and tell with folks in the parking lot. Peggy Pellegrino and her friend June Mackey were so mad about this issue you could barely understand them.
Cole: So you know about this?
June: Yeah.
Peggy: Of course we do.
Cole: Really?
June: We're shoppers.
Peggy: We're consumers.
It's disgusting, Peggy said. But is it deceptive, I said.
Peggy: Of course it's deceptive. They don't bring out a big ad and say we're going to charge you more or the same and give you two ounces less.
June: Not only that.
Peggy: They make you find out for yourself.
June: Not only that, it's harder to scrape it out at the bottom with the indented things.
Others in the parking lot had a different take. They said consumers have to watch out for themselves. But pretty much everyone said they'd rather just pay more for the original sized products.
Oh, and this radio story was reduced from four and a half minutes to 3:15, so -- in Boston I'm Sean Cole for Marketplace.
Comments
Comment | Refresh
From Lebanon, OH, 05/20/2009
I found a local eatery playing the same "trick" on customers. Acapulco in Lebanon is a place that I've eaten many meals. I usually get the same thing. For $7.50 3 soft taco's with rice and refried beans. Now the place charges teh "better price" of $6.50 for the "Taco's Al Pastor" but you have to buy the rice and beans separate at $1.95 each! So the "better" price on the entree actually costs $3.00 more to get what I had gotten before once I order the sides that came with the previous price!
From Salt Lake City, UT, 04/24/2009
Not only are the jar dimples designed to waste food, but they take more packaging (surface area) for less food. Apparently heavier jars are cheaper than the real food. Commodity costs for more packaging and fuel for transport don't save as much money. Marketers need to be more efficient in package design if they want to avoid backlash.
02/11/2009
Haagen-Dazs is reducing their ice cream. I guess a pint is now only 14 ozs. http://www.haagen-dazs.com/company/cartons.aspx
From FL, 01/12/2009
The most blatant one to me is the "New" 8 pack of Pepsi 12 oz cans for the same price as the old 12 packs- and now I see Coke is following. That's a full 1/3 less for the same price not just a couple of ounces
From Arlington, MA, 01/09/2009
I was recently interviewed about the deceptive advertising. I recently purchased BumbleBee Tuna on sale at CVS for 88cents now there's only 5ozs. So is that a bargain? Down from the original 6oz size just a few years.
From Tampa, FL, 01/09/2009
I had been using a Unilever brand of women’s deodorant. Shopping recently at Target for the same brand, I noticed it now comes in “clinical strength,” which sells for about triple the price of regular strength. I compared the level of active ingredient in the new clinical strength to my old container of regular strength – it’s roughly the same. The new regular strength now contains less of the active ingredient than it once did. I switched to a Revlon brand that gave me the same level of active ingredient as the Unilever brand's clinical strength at a regular price.
01/09/2009
As someone who prefers the store brand, so that I'm paying for product, not advertising, I'd say there always has been a deception.
In the grand scheme of things, however, if smaller containers mean Americans eat less of the food loaded with corn syrup and other junk...then maybe obesity will reduce just a little bit? In other words, it may become--pun intended--what the doctor ordered....
01/09/2009
There is a hidden cost which the manufactures are passing on to the public -- the cost of disposing the packaging.
From Salinas, CA, 01/08/2009
While I agree that the consumer needs to be attentive, there are some products that are necessary I simply have to take the hit on. (APOLOGIES) The Playtex tampons I buy every month has been two short for about 18 months ad I didn't figure out that I was having to buy more, more often for about 6 months. I say it's trickery.
From rochester hills, MI, 01/08/2009
Stopping the deception begins with the consumer. Read labels. Compare prices. Put an end to "nickel and dimed to death." Shop locally to avoid getting screwed by Big Oil. Only buy "on sale" to avoid getting screwed by everybody else.
From Cleveland, OH, 01/08/2009
On the other hand, if you only have a couple of bucks at least you can still buy peanut butter. I'd prefer they reduced the portion thatn the price. It's better ot have a little less food than not be able to afford any food.
From Springfield, IL, 01/08/2009
I bet the marketing people are breathing a sigh of relief that only your last interviewee saw the real story and you reporter missed it. The indented bottom is designed to get the customer to waste peanut butter and thus generate more sales per year.
By indenting the bottom, less peanut butter is actually consumed (i.e. it is wasted by be left on the bottom) and thus the purchaser returns to the store sooner for another jar.
If the customer prefers the indented brand, but comparison shops, all the marketers have to do is keep their per ounce price competitive. They will gain that extra repeat sale with its profit margin.
This especially true if most peanut butter is used to by kids, or to make a sandwich in the morning when users are in a hurry.
It's like being told you can only drink 11 ounces of every 12 ounce bottle of Coke.
I call them waste bottoms and avoid them where I can.
This practice of designed-in waste will end when you expose it, and consumers start checking the bottoms (easier than the fine print on the store display of per ounce prices); avoiding the "waste bottoms".
At least, unlike boxes full of air, the consumer can easliy spot this trick and avoid it.
From Baltimore, MD, 01/08/2009
I noticed the smaller packaging for Breyers ice cream immediately, probably because there was a mix of old and new packages on the shelf. I hope that it has helped Unilever, because I have since switched to Ben an Jerry's ice cream.
From Baltimore, MD, 01/08/2009
I noticed the smaller packaging for Breyers ice cream immediately, probably because there was a mix of old and new packages on the shelf. I hope that it has helped Unilever, because I have since switched to Ben an Jerry's ice cream.
01/08/2009
Where have you been these months. The foodprices went up because of the high oil prices (so we were told), oilprices are down and foodprices go up.
1 Lb of whole wheat pasta did cost $0.90 at WM last year, now it is $1.22 for 13 oz and that's only the pasta. Doesn't seem much but it's the same for most food.
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