It’s probably not the first time you’ve experienced this phenomenon, which plays games with your perception and has the effect of making you feel like you’re in a bizarro universe.

But there’s no doubt about it these days you’re a victim of “shrinkflation” and it’s increasingly common.

This term, a combination of the words “shrink” and inflation,” refers to a marketing technique that consumer associations have been alerting about for the past ten years, but which has come to the fore recently, as food prices continue to rise.

On social networks, posts denouncing such practices are indeed becoming increasingly numerous, as the technique gets applied to a range of products in supermarkets.

Smaller packages of potato chips, bottles of perfume with reduced capacity… Volumes go down but the price of the products remain the same, if not more!

But “shrinkflation” goes beyond supermarket shelves: it is also practiced in restaurants, as demonstrated by a study published in July by recommendation platform Yelp, which found that the number of reviews featuring the word “shrinkflation” is increasing significantly.

For consumers, particularly those who are tightening their belts to stretch their budgets and make ends meet during this period of record levels of inflation, it’s an unwelcome practice to say the least.