Quote:
Originally Posted by FredJacobs
I fully understand the need to make a profit. I don't understand why, when given the choice to increase the price or reduce the size of the product they choose to make the product smaller.
My best example is Publix hoagy rolls. I always bought a half pound of sliced deli meat - enough to make to satisfying sandwiches. About a year ago, I reduced the meat purchase to 4/10ths of a pound because I could not get a 1/4 pound of meat on the smaller roll.
Last week, I bought more hoagy rolls and found that they were too small to fit enough meat for a satisfying sandwich. So, now they have removed me as a buyer of the bread.
Customers are always a lot smarter than the marketers think. We understand inflation and can deal with it. All pricing is temporary. If it too expensive, we will wait until it is on sale and then load up. Do I think that when inflation is ended that the marketers will increase the product size - fuhgeddaboudit!
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It is far more complex than that. As I posted elsewhere coffee used to be sold by the pound. It is now 10-13 ounces. If, you were still selling a pound it would of course be more expensive. Few people bother to figure out the cost per ounce and would buy the lower priced but actually more expensive 10-13 ounce size. What to charge is carefully watched by suppliers. A size reduction, a price increase, is often tried by section, by territory.
Wait until it is on sale. The way that works, somethings only sell when they are on sale.
If, the normal price, on which they sell far less is not high enough you cannot run a sale
because it would mean you are losing money on every item sold-a quick way to go bankrupt. When, an item is,"On Sale," the manufacturer can anticipate having more in inventory and the retail store knows to buy more. It is all charted. On the last,"Sale," we sold 50% more our sales are up down from that date so we need to order this much more or less.