South Korea will fight against “shrink inflation” – Kommersant
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From 2024, the South Korean authorities will demand from manufacturers to indicate how much the weight or volume of product packaging has been reduced. This measure is aimed at combating “shrink inflation”, that is, reducing the quantity of goods in a package instead of increasing the price. For control, a special commission is created that will monitor the sizes and prices of goods. Fines may be imposed on violators.
This year, many South Koreans are complaining about shrinking packaging sizes for everything from chips and beer to dumplings and chicken. Previously, the South Korean Ministry of Finance had already statedthat its investigation revealed at least 37 cases of packaging shrinkage.
Inflation in the country reached a record 6.3% in July 2022; in November of this year it was at 3.3%. This is significantly lower than in many other countries, but East Asia has had very low inflation in recent decades, so the current level has led to a noticeable deterioration in the situation of consumers.
Consumers in different countries are experiencing “shrink inflation”. The French supermarket chain Carrefour has already demanded from suppliers to abandon the practice of reducing packaging of goods and began to mark goods that have already been affected by such a reduction with special orange price tags.
In the US, users of social networks, especially Reddit, have recently launched a flash mob in which participants unpacked the popular Oreo cookies, demonstrating that they began to put less cream in them between cookies. There is a forum on Reddit, r/shrinkflation, dedicated to “shrinkflation,” where its members—more than 100,000 of them—post images and descriptions of products that they believe have been shrunk in this way.
Kommersant wrote about “shrinkflation” and the confrontation between retail chains and manufacturers in an article “For a fair size”.
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