What is Shrinkflation?
Shrinkflation refers to the practice of companies subtly reducing the size or quantity of a product while still charging the same price. This allows companies to avoid significantly raising prices, which could shock or alert consumers, while still increasing profit margins.
The Origin of Shrinkflation The term “shrinkflation” is a portmanteau of the words “shrinking” and “inflation.” It was first used in 2009 when the global financial crisis and rising production costs led companies to shrink package sizes without lowering prices accordingly. This allowed companies to offset rising input prices without consumers realizing they were getting less for their money.
However, the practice of sneakily downsizing products predates the term shrinkflation. Economists note that packaging sizes have been very gradually getting smaller for decades - ever since the 1970s. This may have begun due to rising inflation and production costs. However, shrinkflation appears to have accelerated since 2009 for a variety of economic reasons.
Why Companies Are Using Shrinkflation Shrinkflation has become an increasingly common tactic for consumer goods companies today. There are several key economic factors driving the growth of shrinkflation:
- Rising Inflation: With transportation, raw materials, labor and other input costs rising, shrinkflation is an easy way for companies to maintain profit margins. Shrinking product sizes allows them to avoid significantly hiking prices which could scare off consumers. Subtly reducing quantities means companies can offset rising costs without consumers realizing it.
- Increased Competition: In competitive, low-margin categories like food, shrinkflation can give companies an advantage. Consumers tend to be very price sensitive and notice even small price per unit increases. By subtly reducing product sizes, companies can avoid raising red flags for consumers used to specific price points while still improving profitability. This then allows more flexibility with promotional pricing as well.
- Consumer Habit: Consumers get used to package sizes and price points. By making small, gradual reductions to sizes, companies can benefit from this consumer habit and inertia. The differences from one month to the next are small enough that many consumers simply don’t notice slight downsizes over time. This “boiling frog” effect means companies can slowly reap more margin without consumers realizing.
Examples of Shrinkflation Shrinkflation is now found across a huge variety of consumer product categories:
Food & Beverages: This category has seen some of the most egregious examples of shrinkflation over the past decade. Candy bars, sodas, cereals, cookies and more have subtly shrunk in size while still being sold for the same price. For example, family-size chocolate bars like Snickers which used to weigh 2.07 ounces now weigh 1.4 ounces. Packages of 16 ounces of orange juice are now sold as 12 ounces. A tub of Nestle cookie dough wen
This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.
© 2026 Inception Point AI · more info
Artwork and data is from the podcast’s open RSS feed; we link directly to audio · Read our DMCA procedure
This podcast may use tracking and attribution and dynamic content insertion
Stats: Statistics are produced by Megaphone to help What is Shrinkflation? to understand how many downloads it is getting, or how many people are listening. Your device’s IP address and user agent is used to help calculate this figure. Megaphone is IAB v2 certified. Here is more detail about podcast statistics.
Tracking and attribution: Megaphone or its partners may connect the fact you listened to this podcast to an action elsewhere on the internet. For example - it may spot a device that downloaded an episode of What is Shrinkflation? later visited the website of an advertiser; or it may track that a device that listened to What is Shrinkflation? also listened to a different show. This form of attribution is used to measure advertising effectiveness.
Dynamic content insertion: Megaphone may use limited data that they know about you - the device you’re using, the approximate location you’re in, or other data that can be derived from this, like the current weather forecast for your area - to change parts of the audio. What is Shrinkflation? may do this for advertising or for other forms of content, like news stories.
What is Shrinkflation? is able to use the above tools since its podcast host or measurement company offers this service. It doesn’t mean that this individual podcast uses them, or has access to this functionality. We use open data.
Listen and follow
Apple PodcastsInformation for podcasters
- This podcast previously hosted on Spreaker (until May 2026), and now hosts with Megaphone. See changes across podcasting.
- This podcast doesn’t have a trailer. Apple Podcasts has a specific episode type for a trailer, which also gets used by many other podcast apps: but there isn’t one correctly marked in the RSS feed from Megaphone.
- There is a different RSS feed listed in the Podcast Index (here) and Apple Podcasts (here). Our systems normally pull RSS feed addresses from Apple Podcasts; and it should normally match what’s in the Podcast Index.
- This podcast appears to be missing from Truefans, Podcast Index, and Luminary. We list all the podcast directories to be in.
- Validate this podcast’s RSS feed with Livewire, Truefans or CastFeedValidator