Grocery Shopping: The Importance of Checking the Price Per Unit
One of my pet peeves while shopping is to see the packaging get smaller or more air put into the bag or the item in a box will be smaller when the box itself stays the same size. Of course the prices don’t get smaller, they either stay the same or go up in price. Downsizing the item, but not downsizing the price isn’t anything new and it seems to be a popular trend with the weight of Americans going up and up.
That is why it is so very important to take a look at the price per unit and compare them when you are grocery shopping for the best deal, especially now that food costs have gone up over the last year. When I do my large shopping trips I can get out of the store for about 175.00 with enough food for the next 6-8 weeks. This last shopping trip, I got everything I needed and the price was just about 225.00.
If you are unfamiliar with checking price per unit, it would be on the shelf sticker with the full price of the item. If the information isn’t handy like that, then having a calculator (cellphone calculator works) handy when you shop is a good way to determine the unit price. Just divide the price of the item by the ounces, lbs, servings, etc. and you would get the unit price.
The importance of unit pricing is handy when you see some new packaging on an item that you buy regularly. For instance:
- Mouse Print recently showed the package change of Orange Juice.
- NPR’s All Things Considered recently interviewed Ben Popken of the consumer advocacy blog Consumerist about the (audio) change in packaging but not in prices.
- You can read more about Consumerist’s info on packaging changes as well.
Additional Reading:
12 Ways to Cut the Grocery Bill
Bulk Buying Comparison
Store Brands vs. Name Brands
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Dawn C. is site owner of Frugalforlife.com where this is a repost from: Price Per Unit. Dawn is residing in Colorado with her spouse, Teri, of 11 years.
Good advice, but what does the rising (as has occurred throughout history) average (which doesn’t mean median) weight of Americans (who have also changed in ethnic composition and age over the years) have to do with the price of tea in China? And are you really that unfamiliar with the growing critique of queers scapegoating fatness (a quality that, like queerness, is denigrated with justifications of “but it’s a choice!” and “but it’s unhealthy!!)?
GL- I think she meant that companies are trying to get away with downsizing the size of the product and then claiming to do so for the health of the purchaser. I haven’t seen this- but then again I could care less about what corporations think is healthy or unhealthy for me.
Dawn: Thanks for the post. This topic has been getting a lot of play lately. Here are some more examples from a New York Daily News article:
GL –
I said, “Downsizing the item, but not downsizing the price isn’t anything new and it seems to be a popular trend with the weight of Americans going up and up”
This has to do with the snack size packs that are common on the store shelf, such as 100 calorie packs ( http://www.nabiscoworld.com/100caloriepacks/#/varieties/ ), that really end up costing more when priced out per unit.
Just last night I noticed that the yogurts I buy just got 25% smaller, for the same price of course. They were 8 oz. before, but now they’re 6 oz.