Johannesburg - Your favourite brand of toothpaste,
chocolate, chips, rice or tomato sauce may be costing you the same, but are you
getting the same amount of product for your money?
As consumers watch their pennies, some manufacturers are
shrinking the amount of product they put in their packaging in order to keep
prices down.
Consumers are not being informed of these changes, which are
often not noticed as the packaging remains the same.
While the manufacturer may include the new weight or volume
on the packet, how many consumers read these or remember what the volume was
the last time they bought the product?
Examples include Colgate toothpaste, which was reduced from
100ml to 75ml. All Gold tomato sauce shrank from 750ml to 700ml and Cadbury’s
reduced the volume of its luxury chocolate slabs such as wholenut and fruit and
nut from 100g to 90g and 200g to 180g. Many cold drinks have also decreased
their volumes from 340ml to 330ml.
Thami Bolani, chairperson of the National Consumer Forum,
says pack shrinkage is widespread across many products such as toothpaste,
chocolate, rice and beverages and is indicative of a much wider problem where
manufacturers do not put enough information on labels.
“Pick n Pay has found for quite some time that some
suppliers of national brands reduce the size of the content of their products
in order to offset potential price increases,” says Peter Arnold, Pick n Pay’s
acting merchandise director.
Brenda Koornneef, executive group marketing and corporate
strategy head at Tiger Brands [JSE:TBS], which manufactures All Gold tomato sauce,
says the decision to reduce the volume at the end of last year was driven by
rising costs.
“The cost of raw materials and glass packaging had escalated
dramatically over the prior 18 months and we had absorbed these cost increases
as far as possible, but were no longer able to do so.”
She says Tiger Brands, after following other cost efficiency
measures, made the decision to reduce the size of the bottle. “This enabled us
to hold off making a price increase and impacting on consumers’ ability to
purchase their All Gold tomato sauce.”
Pat Senne, head of communications at Kraft Foods (SA), which
bought Cadbury’s last year, says the decision was based on the fact that the
cost of product inclusions - such as fruit and nuts - increased at a rate ahead
of inflation.
“Cadbury was faced with the choice either of increasing the
price of the whole Dairy Milk range or reduce grammage per slab of these two
particular nut variants. We felt reducing the size would ultimately be a better
option for consumers and our trade partners who prefer to line price our
product range.”
Lowering the impact on the consumer’s pocket may be an
acceptable motive but the concern is that it has not been communicated to
consumers, who do not realise they are being short-changed. Where are the
adverts saying: “We have reduced the volume to keep the price down”?
As a result consumers can’t make effective buying decisions
as they are not aware that one brand is offering 25% less product than another.
Toothpaste company Aquafresh has been incensed enough to run a campaign about
pack shrinkage after its competitor, Colgate, reduced the volume of its product
without informing consumers.
Liezel Sabbagh, marketing director of GlaxoSmithKline which
manufacturers Aquafresh and other consumables like Lucozade and Panado, says
that the company has taken an ethical stand and will not partake in pack
shrinkage across any of its brands.
She says pack shrinkage is not unique to South Africa and
has been going on for years in other countries.
Consumers are finding fewer nappies per packet, fewer cider
cans per case, slimmer chocolate, less orange juice in the carton and less
ice-cream in a traditional pint size.
One brand of US toilet paper reduced the number of sheets
and made the toilet paper narrower whilst describing it as “our thickest ever”.
How do you, as a consumer, know if you are still getting the
same value for money? Major retailers like Pick n Pay Stores [JSE:PIK],
Shoprite Holdings [JSE:SHP] and Checkers carry labels on their shelves which
calculate the price of the product per gram or millilitre.
By comparing what one is paying per unit is one way to
compare like with like.
However, the labelling is not always detailed enough. In the
case of a strip of four packets of chips, Pick n Pay labels the cost per
packet, but Simba’s cheese puffs has 16g per packet compared with Pick n Pay’s
No Name Brand’s 20g. Simba’s per packet cost may be R1.87 to Pick n Pay’s R1.92
but Simba works out at 12c/g compared with Pick n Pay’s 10c/g.
Sarita van Wyk, corporate communications manager for
Shoprite, says consumers need to be more vigilant about purchases.
Historically bulk buying was cheaper and many consumers
still believe that if they buy a product in bulk it will cost them less per
unit.
But that is no longer the case.
Van Wyk says today the most popular package size tends to be
the best priced.
- City Press