Grocers They Think Us Stupid Perhaps

[Yo_Mama]

89. It's not the grocery chains

The producers are doing this, and they are doing it for a good reason. People can only buy things with the money they have, and if their money doesn't stretch to an item, they simply don't buy it. So making the packages smaller is a way to continue selling more goods.

What you are seeing is the result of the declining real incomes that can be spent on food, not some vast conspiracy.

If the food producers could sell as much by putting items in larger containers, they would do so. But if the person looks at a juice container's price and cannot afford it, the only way to pick up that sale is to put less juice in a container so that the price will be cheaper, and the item marked "orange juice" on the consumer's shopping list gets checked off.

Further, people will cut on quantity more to buy stuff they want, and with smaller households, for many the larger containers common a generation ago make less sense now.

You do get less food for your money net, because the cost of the container/processing changes little with the decreased sizings, but producers will always package foods to maximize sales.