Carrefour, one of the world's largest grocery chains, is slapping warnings on products when the size shrinks but the price does not. The labels come amid reports of falling costs and rising profits for food manufacturers, facts that suggest they are using media hysteria over inflation to gouge their customers.
Carrefour has marked 26 products in its stores in France with the labels, which say: "This product has seen its volume or weight fall and the effective price from the supplier rise."For example, Carrefour said a bottle of sugar-free peach-flavoured Lipton iced tea, produced by PepsiCo, shrank to 1.25 litres (0.33 gallon) from 1.5 litres, resulting in a 40% effective increase in the price a litre.Guigoz infant formula produced by Nestlé went from 900 grams (31.75 oz) to 830 grams, while Unilever's Viennetta ice-cream cake shrank to 320 grams from 350 grams."Obviously, the aim in stigmatising these products is to be able to tell manufacturers to rethink their pricing policy," Stefen Bompais, the director of client communications at Carrefour, said in an interview.
Wouldn't it be something if Walmart and Tesco followed suit? Carrefour isn't doing it out of the good of their heart, after all. Remember when Cadbury Creme Eggs were the size of actual eggs?
