From our other sites
The story
According to a Forbes JAPAN survey, 47% of respondents said they accept ordinary price increases driven by factors like higher raw material costs — but 60% said they “can’t forgive” so-called stealth price hikes, where companies shrink the amount of product while keeping the price the same, especially the tactic of raising a container’s false bottom to make the contents look smaller. The story lit up 5channel’s News Speed+ board (a current-events forum on 5ch, Japan’s largest anonymous bulletin-board site), with posters piling on familiar examples — shrinking potato chip bags, the two different fill weights of Bourbon’s Alfort chocolate biscuits, the thin rice layer in 7-Eleven bento boxes. But the thread soon split over “what actually counts as a false bottom in the first place,” turning into a debate that a simple net-weight label alone couldn’t settle.
47% Accept Stealth Price Hikes, But 60% Can’t Forgive “False-Bottom” Containers | Forbes JAPAN
2026.09.25 16:15
Forbes JAPAN Web News | Forbes JAPAN Editorial Team
Source: forbesjapan.com / Original article here
What people said
Didn't the old guy just get bumped up to chairman after running things into the ground?
Not buying it that easily.
I'm not going back there anyway, so they can "reflect" all they want lol
That's basically what "no-filling XX" products are.
This stuff messes up the price index and is basically a social ill.
Re: #16
Not 100% sure, but I think they do that too.
Can't help it for things with natural harvest variation,
but sneakily doing it just to match inflation is the same as shrinking the amount — if there's an alternative, that maker goes on my no-buy list.
The wallet-shaped Alfort box is the best value. Even that's gotten pricier though.
False-bottom containers
"Coffee" becoming "coffee beverage" [a labeling downgrade signaling less real coffee content]
"Now easier to hold!" [marketing-speak for a smaller container]
What's the last one?
"Chocolate" becoming "quasi-chocolate" [a cheaper, lower-cocoa-content category under Japanese labeling rules]
You can see clear down to the bottom of the container lol
AND raising the price —
that's a double price hike.
And they're probably cutting the quality on top of that too, making it even stealthier so nobody notices.
People who'd rather a 500-yen item stay at 500 yen with less inside — because if it becomes 550 yen instead, they can't afford other things.
There's a net-weight label right there though.
I mean, they ARE mocking you, right?
Yeah, they're probably picturing the customers buying it and cracking up in the product-planning meeting, like the crew on a prank show.
Convenience-store quality at high-end-supermarket prices,
and the false bottoms are way over the line.
The "cheapskate" image has stuck.
What even IS the definition of a "false bottom" in the first place — how is it distinguished from a shape designed to prevent uneven microwave heating?
What condition counts as a false bottom? If it's a sloped type, at what angle does it become one? If it's a stepped type, what height ratio counts? Until that's pinned down, you can't actually judge whether something is a false bottom or not.
But sure, there are products I'll never buy again.
I think it's more that the bigger the letdown relative to what you expected, the easier it is to feel resentment.
Not a price-hike case, but along the same lines, a strawberry milk went viral for having a clear bottle printed with red graphics that people mistook for strawberry pulp — only to find there was no actual pulp inside.
Who cares about that. Plenty of consumers feel it, and even the new president admitted it.
If the definition isn't clear, there's no actual standard to judge by — so calling any given product a "false bottom" becomes pretty shaky, doesn't it?
Can't have a conversation with someone who needs everything formally defined before they'll accept it.
The gap between appearance and reality is exactly what makes it a false bottom — so it's a separate issue from the actual content amount.
A false bottom can even be a fun surprise sometimes; the difference all comes down to expectations.
Deceiving how? Manufactured food products list the net weight and calories right on the package, don't they? Sounds like you just aren't checking.
How many times is this you've posted in this thread now?
Are you a 7-Eleven employee or something lol
Plenty of people watch their calories, but hardly anyone checks the net weight every single time lol
Background and key points of the discussion
The numbers here come from a consumer survey reported by Forbes JAPAN. It found that resistance runs stronger toward “stealth price hikes” — shrinking the contents while holding the sticker price steady, especially the tactic of raising a container’s bottom to make the contents look smaller — than toward ordinary price increases where the hike is stated outright. On the thread, posters offered concrete, everyday examples of quantities being quietly trimmed in ways easy to miss — potato chips, the rice portion in bento boxes, differing fill weights between versions of the same snack — while others pushed back that “without a clear definition of a false bottom, there’s no way to judge what actually qualifies,” pitting gut-level outrage against calls for a rigorous standard. Underlying it all is distrust not so much of price increases themselves as of the practice of shrinking products without anyone noticing — and the discussion also touched on how closely (or not) consumers actually check net-weight labels themselves.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (News Speed+ board) thread “[False Bottoms] 47% Accept Stealth Price Hikes, But 60% Can’t Forgive “Container Bottom-Raising”.”
Leave a Reply