Confusion in Marketing: Episode #34,302

Ok, I know, every time I go off on the French efforts to do something you all sigh and say: "But Kris, it's the French. You aren't meant to understand."

Anyway, this has been nagging me for weeks now and I can't get it out of my head. Ok, quiz time, hotshots: When you have two packages of one product, one is smaller and one is bigger, logic says that the unit price of which product should be cheaper? If you're French, you undoubtedly are saying to your monitor, but theeze-ees a stupeed kesteeown. Obviously the smaller package should be cheaper. Yeah, yeah, but the unit price: You know the price per kilo? Aahhh oui, yes, that too should be cheaper for the smaller portion.

????

No kidding folks. I think it's the government. Jacky Chirac spent his formidable years (at least some of them) in St. Louis working for the great American piss factory, Anheuser Busch. He no doubt ran across those 35-gallon bags of Doritos and the 50-gallon drums of Coke in his local Stop-n-Shop, or whatever the red state equivalent is. He always remembered this and as a forward thinker, quickly made the link between the 93% American obesity rate and this phenomenon. As he rose through the ranks from corrupt city official to corrupt regional official to corrupt leader of his party to the corrupt head of one of the top 10 or 15 economies in...well, in Europe at least, he decided his most important policy would be to go against every first-semester Economics 101 book and quell the economies of scale before they even got started. Yep, that's right, on a micro economic level France doesn't make any sense...wait 'till you get to the macro stuff.

I'm being honest here: I eat this cereal called Nestle Lion®. It's got enough sugar to keep me going until 11:30 am or so. They sell a 400-gram box and a 650-gram box. The 400-gram box is about 30 cents cheaper per kilo than the 650 gram box. Beer, same thing. Heineken in 25 cl bottles is cheaper per litre than the same in 33 cl bottles. 33 cl cans are more expensive than 33 cl bottles.

If anyone has a differing theory then the one I put forth, please feel free to chip in in the comments segment.