If you’ve been to the grocery store recently, you’ve probably noticed shrinkflation. A cereal box looks the same. The price may even be the same. But when you get home, you realize there’s, well, less inside. Consumers eventually gave that phenomenon a name.
Then came another term that started simmering: skimpflation. Instead of reducing quantity, companies reduced quality or service. The product still looked familiar, but the experience changed; that was probably worse. These words became popular because they described something people had already been seeing for years. Once this “behavior” had a name, it became much easier to recognize it. And what about 3D printing? Does it have its own version? Well, it’s not shrinkflation or skimpflation. For the sake of this discussion, let’s call it Printflation.