By Jerry Kremer
I consider myself a pretty calm and reserved person. It takes a lot to get me angry and I think that has helped me to be a very stable individual. But I have come across some news that could make any citizen angry. It deals with a company named Carrefour.
Carrefour is one of the largest grocery chains in Europe. It has enormous buying power, which makes it a threat to any company that sells its grocery products. According to The Wall Street Journal, Carrefour, which does business in 30 countries, has told PepsiCo the owner of such products as Pepsi, Lays, Quaker Oats, Lipton Tea and Doritos, that it will no longer sell their products because of “unacceptable price increases.”
During the worldwide COVID pandemic, many large companies took advantage of homebound consumers and raised their prices dramatically. Some blamed it on supply chain issues and others came up with their own excuses. The net result of the large consumer prices was that hundreds, if not thousands, of companies reported obscene income, which made their stock prices explode upward.
The COVID disaster is long gone, but that has not stopped many of the major companies from continuing to raise their prices, out of nothing but pure greed. If they didn’t raise the price of your favorite product, some found a way to increase profits by reducing the package size.
As a typical example of price inflation, France reported that as of March, 2023, food price inflation hit 16 percent. Overall, during this past year food prices in that country went up 7.1 percent over 12 months. Happily for U.S. consumers, inflation has been going down dramatically, but that has not stopped many companies from continuing to raise prices to appease stockholders.
You don’t have to be a specialist to take a trip to the nearby supermarket and go aisle by aisle, looking at some of your favorite products. You will find, as I did, that the box of my favorite cereal is two ounces lighter, but the same price. My favorite candy bar shrank in size, but costs the same.
I am not advocating a nationwide consumer revolt because that is above my pay grade, but maybe the next time you go shopping and you have the same experience I did, ask for the manager and tell that person how upset you are with the
costs of your favorite products. That kind of feedback might motivate some manufacturer
to start thinking about price reductions. If you say nothing then you are giving up the fight at a time when a fight is required.
