- 9 hours
- Brands increase prices
- People stop buying brands
- Brands cry foul
- Oh no! Anyway…
The trick, William Potter, is to bleed the people just enough to satiate your parasitism without exsanguinating them, eh?
Gee, we’ve never seen that trick before.
- Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish15 hours
“abandon their favorite brands” is a hell of a way to rephrase “can’t afford to continue eating what they have been previously”. Glad to see it reframed in a way that makes the companies seem like victims.
- 9 hours
I stopped buying products that went from chocolate to chocoly
- deddit@lemmy.worldEnglish9 hours
This article felt a bit like AI click bait. Seems like they were really more interested in talking about AI and providing a link to [redacted]'s AI site. When writing an article about price hikes, why would you take a quote from a CEO pitching his AI site? Why not talk to actual consumers or even better yet CEO’s of companies that are gouging us, or companies that are providing lower priced items. And what about stores, nothing said about them yet they are not innocent in this, nothing about them in the article.
- anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish15 hours
You mean the brands that are owned by like 5 companies?
Fuck em.
- CCMan1701A@startrek.websiteEnglish10 hours
Don’t the same brands also make the store (private label) brands?
16 hours“WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE BRANDS!!!”
and somehow it’s all the Millennial’s fault - Damn (40 year old) kids!
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish16 hours
In the 70s it felt like brands actually meant something. Since the 90s, they haven’t. Brands have milked their loyal followers for every last penny of profit while cheapening their products as much as they possibly can. Brands have become an anti-pattern for me, if a particular brand is “commanding a premium” that’s a sign to me to A) dig DEEP on pre-purchase quality information and if that’s hard to come by (which it usually is) B) walk away from the recognized brand name - assume it to be of inferior quality to go with its higher price.
I shopped in the same grocery store chain my grandparents and parents shopped in my whole life since the 1960s until about 8-10 years ago. At that point they started milking their brand loyalists and literally jacked our monthly food bill 2x, +100%, and that’s not industry wide inflation, that’s how much they inflated relative to the competition. We went from spending 90% of our food, soaps, pharmacy/drug store purchases there down to less than 5% in the first year after we quit them, and since then they now get less than 1% of our budget, only catching our purchases when they’re the only store open or other cases of extreme convenience purchasing. During the pandemic, we had instantcart deliver groceries from a competitor and a $120 delivered order, including $10 tip and delivery fees, were still far less expensive than the same products from the “leading” chain.
- nevyn@slrpnk.netEnglish9 hours
““Do I really care if I’m getting the really cool olive oil brand?” Jones said.”
Jones should open their eyes, use their brain and buy the grapeseed oil instead. Jones should also have a first name.
- radiofreebc@lemmy.worldEnglish15 hours
Everything sucks these days. Every product is worse today than it was 10 years ago.
- vithigar@lemmy.caEnglish16 hours
I stopped buying Campbell’s or any of its subsidiary brands a few years ago when they both raised prices and reduced the size of the can.
They were underhanded about it too because they made the cans slightly taller so it wasn’t obvious that they had less volume.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish15 hours
Shrinkflators can go F themselves. That shrunken package with the same, or often higher, price is a major incentive for me to buy their competitors’ products instead.
In a world where every product sucks due to years of cost cutting and shrinkflation, brands mean very little.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish15 hours
In foods especially, they have substituted corn syrup for sugar, steroid+antibiotic pumped milk and meat for “real” meat (typical market chicken is a travesty these past years), GMO crops sprayed with extreme weed killers and pesticides for simple sun and water grown food. They like to say our food bills are going down in real dollars, but they’re not, not if you buy organic GMO free - which is what most food used to be not so long ago.
- 11 hours
corn syrup
The only reason they do this is because in the US, corn subsidies make it cheaper. HFCS is essentially exactly the same as sugar to the body. It’s not any more or less unhealthy.
GMO
Another overblown fear. Humans have been modifying organisms for millennia. GMO is not inherently harmful. The main harm comes when companies try and make it so farmers have to purchase seed from them for every crap. That’s not harmful to eat. That’s harmful for our food supply.
extreme weed killers and pesticides
These all easily wash off, and you need to be washing your fruit and veg because they are dirty.
It’s trivial to research this for yourself. Stop listening to idiots on youtube trying to sell you supplements and lying to you about these things.
There are problems and concerns, but these are not them.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish9 hours
These all easily wash off, and you need to be washing your fruit and veg because they are dirty.
Keep telling yourself they wash off and have no effects. Then call me from the oncology ward.
People scared of genetically modified foods need to take a good look at vegetable and fruits. You think bananas and watermelons always looked like that? Hell, I’d say most have something going on to make them grow bigger and faster…
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish9 hours
My main objection to GMO are the ones that enable them to bathe our food crops in Roundup and similar.
Selective breeding is one thing, chemical engieering to make your food resistant to poision that kills all other plants? Sounds like something I’d rather not participate in the beta testing of, thanks.
- 10 hours
Corn is probably the most fundamental subject example. Heh.
But yes, you are spot on of course
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish9 hours
Mexican vs US corn is a very clear example of natural farming vs industrial. I’d prefer to pay triple for corn that has diversity in its nutritional elements instead of a monocrop with maximum calories for minimum price.
- Sprocketfree@sh.itjust.worksEnglish15 hours
Remember when the Kellogg’s CEO told everyone that’s poor to just eat more cereal? And then tried to bust the union?
- ClydapusGotwald@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
Jan 2028 PlayStation is going to stop physical games. So you don’t have to wait too long.
- betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish21 hours
Framing this as a customer loss is funny. Switching brands means it’s the brands that are losing, geniuses.
- nomy@lemmy.zipEnglish17 hours
Pretty mind blowing to think maybe people don’t need 200 variations of the same sugary grains.
- MangoCats@feddit.itEnglish15 hours
This was the big eye opener when we ditched our near-monopoly chain grocery for a smaller competitor. Smaller stores, but they had more employees stocking the shelves and more cashiers so you waited less to get out. And in the jelly aisle they had 4 flavors instead of 84. Six kinds of cereals plus six more granolas to choose from, not an endless aisle of $8 wafer thin boxes of sugar coated puffed grains with familiar cartoon characters on the front. Five flavors of ice-cream, not 205. 20 types of yogurt, not 386. It took a little while to get used to the idea that I couldn’t get my preferred brand and size of grape jelly, but after I tried their one option - organic and half the price per ounce of the chain competitors - I decided: grape jelly is grape jelly, this one is fine.
P.S. - I feared I may have been exaggerating, but the above numbers are accurate - I overestimated a little on jelly at first, but pretty much nailed the ice-cream and yogurt first try.
