The Chosun Ilbo recently published an article whose headline says consumers will put up with shrinking portions but not with declining quality. This report could not open the body of that article and relies on its headline. The research behind the theme reached Korean readers in September through Digital Today, which cited the Japanese tech site Gigazine.

The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research by Ioannis Evangelidis, an associate professor at Spain's ESADE Business School. According to Digital Today, in the first experiment, with 1,502 participants, 16% called a chocolate bar's price increase unfair and 46% said so of a size reduction, while about 76% considered a lower cacao content unfair.

Toilet paper and olive oil

Toilet paper tests showed a similar pattern: 70% called lower tissue quality unfair, versus 26% when only the packaging quality was lowered. On a seven-point purchase-intent scale for an olive oil spread, a price increase scored 4.20, a size reduction 4.27 and a quality reduction 3.01. Follow-up experiments with streaming services, orange juice and laundry detergent also showed strong backlash against quality cuts.

The researchers reasoned that quality changes are harder to notice than changes in price or size, so consumers are more likely to feel deceived. Notably, when companies clearly disclosed the change, the gap in perceived unfairness among the three methods narrowed considerably. For laundry detergent, telling buyers to use more to restore cleaning power raised purchase intent for the lower-quality product from 32% to 41%.

Links to the Korean debate

Shrinkflation, in which package size falls while the price holds, has been a recurring target of consumer complaints and government checks in Korea since late 2023. Cutting quality is called skimpflation, and Korean media have recently begun explaining the distinction. The experiments, however, told participants about the changes in advance, so the results cannot be assumed to match real-world shopping behavior.

One reading is that the key lies in how companies label and disclose changes: on the study's findings, transparency about quality changes reduces backlash. Whether Korean consumers react the same way in practice would require follow-up surveys.