He wants more transparency for consumers, in times of rising prices. “As of Monday”, the supermarkets of the Carrefour group will display labels on the products concerned by “shrinkflation”, announced the brand’s CEO, Alexandre Bompard, on Wednesday. The goal? Put pressure on manufacturers to lower prices, says Carrefour.
“I asked that there be a label on the products on which we have “shrinkflation”, saying: this product has seen its container drop and its price increase. That way, we’ll have the most reliable information possible for consumers, because it’s unacceptable to do that,” he said. in the show C in the airon France 5, Wednesday evening.
#shrinkflation ⛔️
We said it, we do it.From Monday in all Carrefours in France, we will be installing 13cmx13cm posters to indicate a simple thing: this product has seen its weight drop and the price charged by our supplier has increased. pic.twitter.com/K9zHbuZ48F
— David Reviriego (@DavidReviriego1) September 7, 2023
The labels, revealed by the brand this Thursday evening, will have an orange background, and will display the words “this product has seen its weight drop, and the price charged by our supplier increase”, specifies the brand. Who adds: “We undertake to renegotiate this tariff”.
“Shrinkflation” is a marketing practice that consists of hiding the rise in product prices by reducing the quantities in similar packaging with an identical selling price. This practice is legal provided that the mention of the weight of the foodstuff is modified. But it can mislead consumers.
An “unacceptable” practice
For Alexandre Bompard, “it is a practice which is unacceptable when there is hyperinflation, which the French suffer”. The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, recently tackled the industrialists who follow this practice, imilating it to “scams”. “We will make it mandatory to display changes in weight or like-packaged content, to stop misleading consumers,” he tweeted in late August.
Same container, less content: disguised inflation. Stop the scams!
We will make it mandatory to display changes in weight or similar package content, to stop misleading consumers. #Shrinkflation— Bruno Le Maire (@BrunoLeMaire) August 31, 2023
Following meetings with industrialists and representatives of large retailers, the Minister also announced on Thursday “a global agreement between industrialists and distributors”, with the aim of “definitively breaking the spiral of food prices “.
This agreement provides in particular that until the end of the year, the prices of 5,000 references will stop rising or even fall. A figure to be compared with the number of references in stores: 3,000 to 5,000 in a supermarket, and between 20,000 and 35,000 in hypermarkets. Food prices jumped 11.1% year on year in August, a slower rise than in July (12.7%) but still significant.