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What Happens To ‘Excuseflation’ When There’s No Excuse?
Lost in the euphoria around the slowdown in consumer price growth and apparently imminent producer p
Is there a segmentation of who was able to raise prices well above cost inflation? ie. what’s the profit margin picture once you look at sectors and/or size?
Thanks for a great bit of synthesis. It’s pretty clear that simply calling out/shaming companies will have a limited impact on their pricing.
What you point out is that perhaps old-fashioned market forces will discourage more rapacious price hikes, albeit at a lag.
Poster Child #1 PepsiCo did mange to raise prices 15% in the second quarter, following up on the twin 16% hikes in the previous two quarters. CFO Hugh Johnson said the latest price hikes were merely following commodity prices higher.
As per your thesis, how will he justify more eyeball-gouging if it became widely known that commodity prices are actually falling? He did note, however, that lower income shoppers have been looking for better deals (WSJ 07/14/2023)