Communicating Price Increases Without Alienating Customers

Companies and consumers in the US and across the world have been grappling with record inflation in the last year. The Conference Board’s recent C-Suite Outlook 2022, a mid-year update of our annual survey, found that slightly more than half of companies globally are passing increasing input costs to customers. Another 46 percent of companies are cutting costs and 39 percent are accepting lower margins due to higher input costs.

But passing on higher costs doesn’t come easily to executives in the C-suite: 44 percent report the biggest external communications challenge in the current volatile environment to be communicating the impact of rising input costs on the pricing of their products and services.

Our latest research with US consumers confirms the top communications challenge companies say they face: consumers think companies’ explanations of price increases could be improved.

Read more here about what can happen when customers’ own interpretations and media coverage about price increases fill companies’ silence about price increases and how companies can communicate price increases without alienating customers.