Carragee Consulting

Mark Stiving, PhD writes a great blog about pricing. I like his recent post about Chipotle’s price increase, and not just because I love burritos the size of your head:

http://pragmaticpricing.com/2014/05/05/chipotle-price-increase-what-should-you-learn/

Mark hits on a good point about “inside-out” reasons for price increases. For Chipotle, they want to increase same store revenues and a price increase will accomplish that. However, this reason won’t help customers feel okay about the price increase. The further point that Mark does not delve into, is that there are some things you need to communicate internally and to shareholders and some things you need to communicate with your front-line employees and customers. The rationale may be a legitimate business need, but the communication is the tactical side of price increases which often gets overshadowed by the business strategy view.