Quote Originally Posted by Loki View Post
You're missing one rather obvious point. If the company could have gotten away with raising prices 4 cents before, why didn't they do so? The most likely reason is that the increase would drive away more customers that would be earned by that increase.
This generalization at the end here isn't any better than the one I made. It could be that an increase in cost is planned out over the course of a product's shelf life if that product performs well. It also varies heavily based on the type of business.

Edit: My generalization was also done in response to Lewk's post, which was implying that the increase in cost to poor consumers would be too great to bear.