It’s not a trap, it’s an intentional choice, and a very profitable one. Imagine you sell a lot of a product but costs make up 90% of revenue. Then you double the price and as a result sell half as much. Your costs stayed roughly the same, maybe went up a little. So now instead of making 10% profit, you are making 40-45% profit per item. Now imagine your sales declined by less than 50% and how much extra profit that would be.
Prior to the pandemic companies would be careful about raising prices. If they raised prices by 5% and lost 10% of sales, that was less profitable than not increasing the price. But the legit supply chain shortages during the pandemic made them realize that a larger subset of customers were willing to pay significantly higher prices than they thought, and they also realized they had less competition than they thought, and now everything costs double and we all just call it inflation, because that’s what inflation is. When the price of everything goes up at the same time.
It will continue until either there is nothing left of the upper middle class, or the upper middle class stops paying. The poor and lower middle class are already priced out, and companies do not care.
It’s not a trap, it’s an intentional choice, and a very profitable one. Imagine you sell a lot of a product but costs make up 90% of revenue. Then you double the price and as a result sell half as much. Your costs stayed roughly the same, maybe went up a little. So now instead of making 10% profit, you are making 40-45% profit per item. Now imagine your sales declined by less than 50% and how much extra profit that would be.
Prior to the pandemic companies would be careful about raising prices. If they raised prices by 5% and lost 10% of sales, that was less profitable than not increasing the price. But the legit supply chain shortages during the pandemic made them realize that a larger subset of customers were willing to pay significantly higher prices than they thought, and they also realized they had less competition than they thought, and now everything costs double and we all just call it inflation, because that’s what inflation is. When the price of everything goes up at the same time.
It will continue until either there is nothing left of the upper middle class, or the upper middle class stops paying. The poor and lower middle class are already priced out, and companies do not care.