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The reason I ask, is I noticed that Naked brand Strawberry Banana drinks now taste like regular juice, instead of having a thick smoothie taste. They used to advertise that each small bottle contained 22 strawberries, also listing the primary ingredient as strawberry puree. They now say each bottle is 6 and 3/4 strawberries, with the primary ingredient being apple juice. Strawberry puree is now listed as the 3rd ingredient.
Is there a term for when a manufacturer changes ingredients so drastically that it just ruins the original product? I've heard "enshitification" before, but always associated that with tech.
In before someone says Naked is all sugar and isn't worth drinking in the first place.
Its still referred to as shrinkflation as i have seen it used. Putting filler material is just hiding the shrinkage, but the motivators and the result is the same
Shrinkflation is smaller quantities and/or higher prices. This is actually tracked in a variety of places.
Changing to a cheaper recipe/supplier is very hard to put metrics on, and isn't tracked anywhere that I know of
Shrinkflation is smaller quantities
Yes
and/or higher prices.
No. That's just normal inflation.
Right, by design. But when your are talking about the phenomenon casually, because the purpose and result is the same, shrinkflation seems to suffice. Are you asking for the name of the phenomena in the context of a detailed study? For that i am not sure it has a term it’s own.
I think it's different enough from shrinkflation that it needs its own name. My gripe specifically was with Naked Juice, where if it was just being sold in a smaller bottle, I would buy more. But the recipe has actually changed to a point where I don't want to drink it at all now, because it's just not the same.
From an article linked above, my emphasis added, this is different because consumers are less able to protect themselves from it by being informed:
"We have long observed shrinkflation and bad value for money maxi packs," Laura Clays, spokesperson for consumer protection organisation Test Achats, told The Brussels Times. "However, these tactics were mainly dubious from a financial point of view. This is still unacceptable, but consumers were able to protect themselves by keeping an eye on the price per unit."
She stressed that in the case of "cheapflation", the consumer is left more or less powerless. "This tactic is really about what people are ingesting, which is even more sneaky. While this will likely not have major health effects, eating less fishy fish sticks is definitely not a healthier meal option, so that's not ideal."
Strictly speaking this is a subset of what the food industry calls reformulation. They'll also reformulate a product for other reasons (eg to reduce sugar/fat/salt or add a vitamin so they can make a health claim, tweak the flavour if it isn't performing well, etc) but reducing materials and manufacturing costs is a big part of it. Maybe we can coin the term "deformulation".
I like that name. Deformulation definitely implies that the change was not made for the benefit of the consumer.