You’ve probably noticed it at the grocery store. The chocolate bar tastes a little different. The olive spread lists less olive oil than it used to. The orange juice seems watered down. When production costs rise, companies have three basic options: charge more, sell less for the same price, or quietly make the product cheaper to produce. That third option, known as skimpflation, has become increasingly common. But how do shoppers actually feel about it once they find out?
New research published in the Journal of Consumer Research finds that consumers judge quality cuts as significantly more unfair than either shrinking a package or raising a price by an equivalent amount. They’re also less willing to buy the product afterward. The author calls this reaction the “skimpflation penalty.”
The question behind the research
Ioannis Evangelidis, an associate professor of marketing at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, wanted to know how shoppers weigh these three cost-management strategies against one another. Prior research had compared price hikes to package shrinkage. An earlier paper by Evangelidis himself found that shoppers viewed shrinkflation as sneakier and less fair than an equivalent price increase. But no one had directly compared all three approaches, including the quality-cutting version.
The distinction matters because existing theory offered conflicting predictions. Some research suggested consumers accept price adjustments when firms face real cost pressure. Other work suggested shoppers dislike anything that feels deceptive. And research on product “essentialism” suggested that changing what a product is made of might feel different from changing how much of it you get.
One important caveat runs throughout the studies: participants were always told about the change. The research doesn’t estimate how often shoppers would spontaneously notice a quality drop in the wild. It examines how they react once they know.
How the studies were designed
Evangelidis ran ten preregistered experiments, with additional studies reported in an online appendix. The core setup was consistent. Participants recruited through the online platform Prolific read a short scenario describing a company facing rising costs. Depending on their assigned condition, they learned the firm had chosen to raise prices, shrink the package, or reduce quality (typically by cutting a key ingredient). They then judged whether the change was fair or unfair, or reported how likely they were to buy the product.
The first study used 1,502 participants and two very different products: a chocolate bar and a streaming service. Across both, the pattern was clear. When the chocolate maker raised prices, 16% of participants called the move unfair. When the same firm shrank the bar, 46% called it unfair. When it lowered the chocolate’s quality, 76% called it unfair. Streaming subscribers reacted less strongly overall, but the ordering was the same: quality cuts drew the harshest reactions.
Follow-up studies replicated the finding with olive spread, orange juice, laundry detergent, and toilet paper. The gap persisted across a wide range of goods.
Why quality cuts feel worse
Evangelidis proposes several reasons for the pattern. One is transparency. Price changes are visible on the shelf, and shrunk packages can often be spotted through label information. But a formulation change, like lowering the cocoa content of a chocolate bar from 85% to 70%, is much harder to detect without direct comparison.
To test whether perceived deception was driving the penalty, two studies (with roughly 3,000 and 4,000 participants) manipulated whether the firm or retailer explicitly communicated the change. When companies openly disclosed what they had done, the fairness gaps between the three strategies shrank substantially. Under low transparency, 67% of participants judged an olive oil reduction as unfair. When the same reduction was clearly labeled, that figure dropped to 21%.
A second explanation is that quality cuts change the product itself. A smaller chocolate bar is still the same chocolate. A more expensive bar is still the same recipe. But a reformulated bar with less cocoa is arguably no longer the product the shopper originally chose. To test this, Evangelidis ran a study using toilet paper. When the firm reduced the quality of the paper itself, 70% of participants called it unfair. When the firm instead reduced the quality of the packaging, only 26% did — actually lower than the shrinkflation response. In other words, quality cuts to peripheral features didn’t provoke the same backlash.
When the cost story matters
A separate study examined whether the size of the change relative to the size of the cost increase changed how people reacted. Evangelidis told 4,005 participants that the firm’s costs rose by 5%, 10%, or 15%, while the corresponding change to the product was always 10%.
When the change matched or was smaller than the cost increase, the skimpflation penalty was strong. But when the 10% change exceeded a 5% cost increase, participants judged all three strategies harshly. Roughly three-quarters called each option unfair, including the price hike. Shoppers appear to accept adjustments meant to offset cost pressure, but not ones that look like an attempt to expand profits.
Effects on actual buying decisions
Fairness judgments are one thing. Purchase intent is another. Three additional studies asked participants how likely they were to buy the modified product. Purchase intent dropped sharply for quality cuts. In one olive-spread study, participants rated their likelihood of buying the reformulated version at 3.01 out of 7, compared with 4.27 for the shrunken package and 4.20 for the higher-priced version. The difference between size cuts and price hikes wasn’t statistically meaningful.
To test whether this held up when real money was on the line, Evangelidis ran a study with 208 business school students who made incentive-compatible choices, meaning five participants would actually receive whichever chocolate bar or orange juice they picked. For the orange juice, 39% chose the version with a higher price, 37% chose the smaller size, and only 25% chose the version with reduced juice concentration.
The recoverability angle
The final experiment tested a subtler idea. If a quality reduction can be worked around — by using a bit more of the product, for instance — do shoppers react less negatively? Evangelidis presented 1,005 participants with a scenario about laundry detergent whose active ingredient concentration was reduced. Half were told they could compensate by using more detergent per load. The other half were told the reformulation couldn’t be fixed that way.
Willingness to buy dropped from 61% (size cut) to 41% (recoverable quality cut) to 32% (non-recoverable quality cut). Perceived quality loss was similar in both quality conditions, suggesting the difference came from whether shoppers felt they could still get the original experience.
What it means for companies and regulators
Evangelidis is careful to note what the research does not show. It doesn’t measure how often shoppers actually notice these changes in stores. A quality cut might still be profitable if few customers detect it. A price increase might be more accepted per shopper but noticed by everyone.
Still, the studies suggest specific risks for companies considering skimpflation. Once the change becomes public — through media coverage, social media, or a shopper’s own tongue — reactions can be sharper than for other cost-management moves. The research also points to ways firms might soften the blow: communicating changes openly, targeting less central features like packaging, or making sure shoppers can still reach the original experience through modest behavioral adjustments.
For policymakers, the findings connect to ongoing regulatory efforts in France, Germany, and the European Parliament to require disclosure of shrinkflation. Evangelidis argues that similar rules could apply to meaningful changes in ingredients or formulation, particularly since existing food labeling requirements often obscure gradual reformulations. Whether such disclosure rules would meaningfully change corporate behavior remains an open question for future research.
