Higher household product prices on the way
Prices for household staples from diapers to toilet paper are on the rise again as manufacturers look to offset the higher cost of commodities.
Many of these products had already seen a price hike in 2018.
Church and Dwight recently increased prices for about one-third of its products, including Arm & Hammer cat litter and baking soda, and some OxiClean cleaning products, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Church & Dwight is among companies such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Clorox that have raised prices or plan to.
Consumers are seeing higher prices for Pampers and Huggies diapers, Bounty and Viva paper towels, Charmin and Scott toilet papers and Arm & Hammer baking soda, among other products.
“Right now the price index information that we are seeing in terms of increases is you know pretty tame and so the increases that we are hearing about are anecdotal and I haven’t really seen anything that rises to the level of showing up at the top numbers yet," Kevin Hassett, White House Council of Economic Advisors Chairman told FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo. "So I think that if you look at PCE inflation which is the core thing that the fed looks at then it’s still looking very reasonable and we are seeing a tick up in wages but that’s being followed by a tick up in productivity as we’ve been saying for a while."
For much of the past decade, price cuts have been far more common than price increases as U.S. companies were mostly reluctant to test consumers’ spending power and brand loyalty in a fragile economic recovery.
Traditional brands have also been under pressure from retailers like Walmart and Amazon.com to keep prices low.
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Sales volumes of household and personal products in the U.S. declined 1.4 percent in January, according to Bernstein’s analysis of data from Nielsen, according to the Journal.
Even with a strong economy, there are limits to how much brands can charge without losing some customers.