cheapflation

Noun

cheapflation (uncountable)

1. (informal, neologism) The practice of decreasing the main ingredient of a product or replacing it altogether with a less costly one but continuing to market it at the same price and size.
   • I usually stay away from the ice cream isle but bought this as a " treat" 🤢. I thought i lost my sense of taste until i read the carton. [Artificially Flavored Vanilla Swirled With Roasted Peanut Butter] […] [bigolruckus:] “Ice cream” has got so cheaply made and over priced I’ve stopped buying it2024 March 4, [deleted user], “Cheapflation- Turkey Hill frozen dairy dessert”, in r/shrinkflation
   • However, the latest trend, "cheapflation", is deemed the most harmful so far. ¶ "Cheapflation" – a contraction of "cheap" and "inflation" – is a cunning sales trick which sees producers reduce, remove or replace the most expensive ingredient in products with cheaper or lower-quality substitutes.2024 April 30, Lauren Walker, “Not-so-fishy fish sticks”, in The Brussels Times, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2024
2. (neologism) An experience of inflation in which the prices of low-cost goods increase faster than those of higher priced goods in the same category.
   • Price changes associated with discounts grew at a much lower average rate than regular prices, helping to mitigate the inflation burden. By contrast, cheapflation – a faster rise in prices of cheaper goods relative to prices of more expensive varieties of the same good – exacerbated it.2024, Alberto Cavallo, Oleksiy Kryvtsov, “Price discounts and cheapflation during the post-pandemic inflation surge”, in Journal of Monetary Economics, volume 148, number Supplement, →DOI
   • An NBER working paper from Alberto Cavallo and Oleksiy Kryvtsov published last month finds “ample evidence” that so-called cheapflation is a global phenomenon. Their study of grocery prices through the recent inflation surge shows that prices of cheap goods grew between 1.3 to 1.9 times faster than...2024 July 10, Bryce Elder, “Turns out cheapflation was a thing after all”, in Financial Times, archived from the original on 10 Jul 2024