Keep it plain

OPINION: Cadbury has passed through the south on its nationwide act of contrition, handing out free chocolate the length and breadth of the country in de facto repentance for having temporarily junked up its product with palm oil, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

Reluctant as we must be to deny southerners the possibility of similar ice cream giveaways, the fact is Tip Top does not deserve to find itself in similar straits.

There's no getting around it that the company has reduced by 20 per cent the size of some of its ice cream tubs. The same price buys you less, and the fact that there are proportionately more "goodies" like gumdrops in the mix, even when adjusted for volume, doesn't particularly sweeten the reality that we are still paying the same for less.

You don't look pleased. Fair enough. But in the end, Tip Top has shown better judgment than Cadbury did, when faced with the need to react to rising costs.

This typically gives rise to three options, none of which is pretty. You put prices up. You source cheaper ingredients. You give people less product for their money.

With household finances under real pressure, this is a particularly bad time to be raising prices. Cadbury stands as a vivid cautionary tale against lowering the standard of ingredients (though it's worth remembering that this company at the same time reduced the size of bars and blocks, and hasn't backtracked on that one).

It is not unreasonable if companies such as Cadbury and Tip Top assess their situation and decide that something has to give, and that reducing quantity is the least unappealing option. Much as it amounts to a price increase, it doesn't require a change to the amount on the supermarket docket and many householders would be just as happy about that.

You could argue that even smaller-sized dessert helpings in the homes of the nation aren't necessarily such a bad thing either.

Other products have been shrinking perceptibly, including lines of canned goods, breakfast cereals, some beer cans and blocks of cheese.

The crucial thing, surely, is to be up front about it.

Frankly, there's often scant alternative. Some media have reacted as though Tip Top has been cleverly caught out by alert consumerism. Really, though, it was always going to be pretty hard to miss.

One of Cadbury's worst calls was insisting that its adoption of palm oil instead of cocoa butter was something people wanted. Whichever researchers or marketers came up with that wee gem weren't serving their employer well at all.

In Tip Top's case it was pure sugar coating when the company smarmed out that that downsizing Goody Good Gum Drops, Jelly Tip, Monkey Business and Gone Fishin' lines had spared price increases for the more traditional lines that had been "carrying" these four fussier flavours for a while.

Was that really ever on the cards? Let's not forget the potential to discontinue underperforming lines.

But the really important lesson is that when customers are going to be paying the same for less, then fess up and explain why. People can handle that.

So it's best to think vanilla – keep it plain, guys. Keep it plain.

- © Fairfax NZ News