Many consumers across the United States are increasingly aware of the decreasing quantity for many of the products that they regularly purchase and consume. This concept is know as product downsizing or shrinkflation, a term used to describe how a consumer product is sold at the same price, but its net contents have been reduced. Because it’s difficult for consumers to monitor product quantity changes when shopping, how can they make the best purchasing decision when faced with changing package sizes?

Shrinkflation had a nationwide moment in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union 2024 address, and in particular detail on Super Bowl Sunday last February with President Biden making an appeal on X (formerly known as Twitter) for companies to put a stop to it. Quoting the president, “When buying snacks for the game, you might have noticed one thing: Sports drink bottles are smaller, a bag of chips has fewer chips, but they’re still charging you just as much.”

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