Interested in raising your prices without upsetting your customers?  Glean some ideas from the masters…food manufacturers.

I’ve always knew this was happening…but I never had the opportunity to witness it first hand.  Food manufacturers (and certainly other manufacturers) raise their prices by selling you less product at the same price in new packaging. I’m sure this has been happening since the dawn of time, but I’m only now starting to be a little annoyed by it.  

I first noticed it in graham crackers.  Over the years, I’ve enjoyed many a camp fire with marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers.  From time to time, I’ve noticed that there are fewer graham crackers in each box.  The graham crackers are also a bit thinner than they used to be.  I still by the same brand, but I know that the packaging, quantity and size per cracker are just the initial phases in a comprehensive program of planned price increases.  First they lower the quantity, then the size, then they bump the price.  Maybe not in that specific order, but that is the general plan.  Shoppers are often price sensitive and will definitely notice an outright price increase, so do that last, right?  The number of graham crackers in a box…might not notice that.  The width of the cracker, definitely won’t notice that…unless you have an old one right next to it for comparison purposes.

Well, I was out at the local Harris Teeter last week…in the market for some sugar free gum.  Trident is my brand…kids love it; it lasts pretty long; fits nicely in the storage area in the door of my car.  I was perusing the options and say their Original Flavor in its minty-blue package and their Tropical Twist flavor in its bright orange package.  A good deal…three packs for $2.99.  But wait, the Tropical Twist looks so much bigger.  It is longer and a bit wider.  Must be a better deal, right.   

Wrong.

I went ahead and bought both packs and brought them home.  A quick and dirty review of the details of each package reveals what is really going on.  The new, bigger looking packaging masks a 29% increase in the price of a stick of gum (reflecting the increased size in each piece of gum, the price increase per (g) of Gum is 21%).  I also noticed that Harris Teeter was giving away the old individual packs of Trident gum (one per VIC customer).  Don’t want the evidence lying around, certainly not hanging up on display side by side.  What if someone looked a little more closely?

Old Packaging on Left

New Packaging on Right

		Original Packaging		New Packaging		% Change
Price		$2.99		$2.99		0.00%
Packs of Gum		3		3		0.00%
Sticks of Gum in a pack		18		14		(22.22%)
Size of a Stick of Gum (g)		1.7		1.8		5.88%
Price per Pack		$1.00		$1.00		0.00%
Price per Stick of Gum		$0.0554		$0.0712		28.57%
Price per (g) of Gum		$0.0326		$0.0396		21.43%