Excuseflation

The key question is, in an economy where the consumer continues to spend freely, how sticky this “excuseflation” proves to be and how high the Federal Reserve will have to drive up interest rates to prompt businesses to lower prices, or at least stop raising them.

The power of excuseflation is that it allows apologists to, well, make excuses. When egg prices shot up in January, Big Egg was able to blame it all on bird-flu.

It's called, ‘Excuse-flation’, because most of the big brands are using inflation as an excuse, to keep their prices high.

These may be entirely legitimate reasons to raise prices but the companies engaging in excuseflation are seen as exploiting the situation.

Excuseflation The pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine both had material impacts on the availability of goods and services. […] Executives say they needed to pass along their own increased costs to protect their margins. Skeptics see excuses at play.

2020 was the first year that a lot of people saw shortage problems in supermarkets. In that situation we are also more likely to accept price increases. So yes, I think there is some excuseflation in that, in a context of shocks and emergencies, it changes the mindset of consumers.