Is the solution to saving a few cents on certain products (with the hope it leads to bigger savings once you check out) having a smaller selection at the grocery store?
More and more companies seem to support that idea.
And let’s be honest: How many different kinds of Oreos, Triscuits or different jars of mayonnaise do you really need to choose from to begin with? The answer might be not as many as you have now.
In fact, it’s gradually happening already.
“If I’m walking through the hot sauce section, I always sort of stand back and admire the variety,” said Jadrian Wooten, an economics professor at Virginia Tech. “It’s a lot of fun to see all the different flavors of cookies, chips, sodas, mayonnaise and hot sauce — all sorts of stuff. Those are the products that you’ll see start to slim down.”
In some cases, the demand for the different flavors, some of which are pretty close but not quite the same as the original product you fell in love with, just isn’t there.
“I think companies are starting to realize that it’s costing them a lot of money to provide this amount of diversity,” Wooten said.
That doesn’t mean you’ll only see two kinds of Oreos someday; but maybe instead of eight varieties of crackers or condiments, you’ll start to see five or six.
“I think for most people, you probably won’t notice much of a change, because it’s probably the varieties you’re buying,” Wooten said. “But if there’s some sort of special one, don’t be surprised if that doesn’t come back in a couple months when your bottle runs out.”
The more varieties a company produces, the less capacity it has to make its core product, and that leads to higher prices, according to Wooten.
But should we really expect prices to come down? Wooten said that could be a way to increase demand on certain products as well.
“Inflation on food is still going up,” he pointed out. “If people aren’t buying my product because they can’t afford it, the easiest way to sort of fix that is by lowering those prices. If there’s a place that a company can gain a little bit of an advantage by cutting prices, I think you’ll start to see that.”
Don’t expect that to happen storewide, though.
“You’re not going to see that in fruits and vegetables. You’re not going to see it at the deli counter,” Wooten said. “You’re going to see it in this cookies/chips/condiments section where there’s lots of variety to pick from.”
And the same line of thinking is starting to penetrate other industries, too.
“We’re seeing this in different toy sections. We’re seeing it in clothing,” he said. “If there’s something that you know you’re purchasing that is a niche product specific to you and your lifestyle, a lot of it is just thinking about … how would you replace that if you needed to replace that?” Wooten said.
This process will be a gradual one, but once items are removed from production, they’ll eventually be gone for good.
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