Customers don’t like price increases, so many manufacturers prefer to save on content. It comes to the same thing, but it’s not so easy to notice. The Hamburg consumer advice center takes a close look and regularly selects the “deceptive package of the month”. She selects the most brazen ones from consumers’ complaints about hidden price increases.
The criticism from consumer advocates is usually not that something is becoming more expensive at all. Rather, the manufacturers do not communicate this honestly and use clever packaging and pricing to disguise the fact that customers are getting less for their money. In the wake of rising inflation, the term “shrinkflation” was established for the phenomenon.
Illustrious series of deceptive packages
The Hamburg consumer advice center has already denounced many well-known manufacturers as deceptive packaging of the month. The chocolate Santa Claus and the smiling bunny from Milka were among them, as was the pasta sauce Miracoli and muesli from Dr. Oetker. Milka manufacturer Mondelez also criticized consumer advocates for moving away from the 100 gram standard size to 93, 87 or 81 gram bars and for shrinking some 300 gram large packs to 270 or 280 grams.
Once a year, the consumer advice center lets five candidates vote on the deceptive package of the year. For the year 2022 this was . Our photo series shows more deceptive packages from the past few months.
++Here you will find deceptive packages from the industry that are still on supermarket shelves today++
Source: Stern
