Price Increase By Any Other Name

The recent earnings announcement by Cadbury Plc has an interesting phrase, “Price Realization”

Price realisation, which includes price rises, adjustments in promotional frequency and product and package resizing, has been essential to recover cost pressures throughout the year, particularly in cocoa, sweeteners and oil based materials.

Essentially this is capturing more value by

1. Simple price increase
2. Reducing discounts and frequencies
3. Reducing value delivered ( product and package resizing) for the same price

In simple terms, all these boil down to price increase.

“Marketers seem to go out of the way to  call  “price increase” as something else. I had a marketing professor who not only told us to never say, “increase prices” but fined  $5 every time someone used it in discussions. His advise, you never increase prices, you only improve them.

Should price increases be termed “price realization” or “price improvements”. “Improve” is better than “realize”. Overall “improve” like a very good term to use not only for price increases but in other situations as well because it only has positive meaning, moving from a bad situation to a better situation.

No wonder brands are beginning to realize (pun intended) the need to improve prices.