“Shrinkflation” or “reduflation”, a decried commercial strategy | EUROtoday

Published on : 09/01/2023 – 16:42

2 minutes

Attention, new modern Anglicism! Thursday, August 31, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire and the president of the group La France insoumise (LFI) within the Assembly Mathilde Panot each talked about the phenomenon of “shrinkflation” – a word- English suitcase coming from the contraction of the verb “to shrink” (“reduce”) and the noun “inflation”. A enterprise strategy of hiding rising product costs by decreasing portions in related packaging with the identical promoting worth.

“We keep the same ‘package’, there is less content, and we sell at the same price, or even at a higher price”, was indignant Bruno Le Maire on France 2, citing the Kiri cheese model. “We will struggle towards these deceptive practices, towards these abusive practices. I’ll seize the National Consumer Council and there would be the obligation – once more authorized – for producers to incorporate the change in content material when it has dropped and that the worth stays the identical,” the minister added.

For her part, the leader of the rebellious deputies announced on Thursday that it was filing a bill against commercial practice. La France insoumise wants to be considered as misleading, and therefore prohibited, the fact of “decreasing the amount” of a product “for an equal or larger worth with out clearly informing the buyer”.

“Reduflation”, “rapetiflation”, “shrinkage”

A term in French – also a portmanteau word – is put forward in Quebec to designate the commercial strategy: “réduflation”. The Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), always at the forefront in the fight against Anglicisms, defines it as the “undersizing of a client good by its producer, with out a discount within the promoting worth”.

Other words exist in French, such as “rapetiflation”, a term used in particular at the end of 2016 by the economic newspaper Les Échos, when the confectionery brand Toblerone announced that it would reduce the weight of two bars on sale in the United Kingdom without affecting the price of the product. Others still prefer the term “shrinkage”. Should we legislate towards this inflation of neologisms?