Comment by anigbrowl

2 years ago

That's interesting and sort of amusing, but I didn't notice as I buy from fairly small farms.

It's not that I think eggs are immune to price fixing, but rather that the packaging of fresh eggs isn't easy to change; the eggs themselves can't be altered and while you could sell fewer of them per box consumers (in the US at least) are used to multiples of 6 and would immediately notice. In contrast you could reduce the volume of, say, detergent but redesign the container, and many consumers might not notice that they were getting 6-7% less.

What I'm getting as is that while the causes of egg price changes might be legit or greed, it isn't as easy to hide the price changes from the consumer as when you operate a whole production line and can alter the appearance and volume of the package itself.

You don't even need to redesign (resize) the packages (boxes, think laundry detergent or cereal). Just fill them up with 5-10% less and only change the printed weight/volume. If the package doesn't transparently show the product inside it's not as obvious.