Column by Alexandra Mertsalova about the confrontation between retail chains and manufacturers

Desperate times call for desperate measures—a principle that businesses, including retailers, often follow. Thus, the Carrefour chain in France marked 26 products of large brands with signs: “Friendflation: the volume or weight of the product has decreased, and the supplier’s price has increased.” During a crisis, manufacturers often do this.

The retailer deliberately began labeling such products on shelves in order, according to Carrefour spokesman Stephane Bompais, to “stigmatize them and allow manufacturers to rethink their pricing policies.” The company expects to put pressure on suppliers in line with the growing fight against inflation. At the end of summer, the French Ministry of Finance announced that prices for 5 thousand essential goods would be fixed.

In Russia, where rising prices for end consumers also often become a source of conflict between retailers and suppliers, there is no rush to repeat Carrefour’s experience. Market participants appeal to a “high culture of partnership relations,” although they immediately recall the example of the Verny chain, which regularly loudly removes from the shelves products from manufacturers with whom it is not possible to find a common language.

Shrinkflation, meanwhile, is also pronounced in the Russian Federation and they have even tried to regulate it. This summer, LDPR deputies introduced to the State Duma a bill on so-called fair price tags, requiring the cost of goods to be indicated strictly for one liter or kilogram. The business criticized the idea, fearing additional obligations. “The range of goods in convenience stores is about 5 thousand items, the share of goods already weighed and packaged by the manufacturer is overwhelming, and manual recalculation will lead to an increase in retail costs and will significantly increase the risk of errors in calculations associated with the human factor,” said “ RIA Novosti” head of the Association of Retail Trade Companies Igor Karavaev. The buyer already has enough tools to track the decline in goods volumes, the organization insisted. After such a controversy, it would be at least strange for retailers to initiate a re-measurement of price tags.

And will this approach play into the hands of consumers? Even in Carrefour’s ideal world, where lawmakers and chains still managed to defeat price inflation, other controversial price-control measures are unlikely to be taken away from manufacturers. For example, skimpflation – the deterioration of the quality of goods to reduce costs – the wave of which is probably just around the corner. The Guardian has already found at least eight such examples in the UK: in Aldi’s spread, for example, the share of olive oil was reduced from 21% to 10%, in Morrisons guacamole it became 77%, not 80% avocado. And this is much more difficult for consumers to monitor than shrink inflation.