Cost Pass-Through in the U.S. Coffee Industry
by
Ephraim Leibtag, Alice Nakamura, Emi Nakamura, and Dawit Zerom
Economic Research Report No. (ERR-38) 28 pp, March 2007
A rich data set of coffee prices and costs was used to determine to what extent changes in commodity costs affect manufacturer and retail prices. On average, a 10-cent increase in the cost of a pound of green coffee beans in a given quarter results in a 2-cent increase in manufacturer and retail prices in the current quarter. If a cost change persists for several quarters, it will be incorporated into manufacturer prices approximately cent-for-cent with the commodity-cost change. Given the substantial fixed costs and markups involved in coffee manufacturing, this translates into about a 3-percent change in retail prices for a 10-percent change in commodity prices. Coffee manufacturers do not appear to take advantage of manufacturing and production cost variation to raise retail prices; retail prices respond the same to both increases and decreases in costs of coffee beans.
Keywords: Coffee, retail prices, pass-through, manufacturer prices, price-cost relationship
In this publication...
- Report summary,
91 kb
| HTML - Abstract, Contents, and Summary,
170 kb
- Introduction,
57 kb
- The Coffee Value Chain,
104 kb
- Data Description,
58 kb
- How Important Is the Coffee Bean in Determining Costs?,
66 kb
- Differences in Prices Across Markets,
60 kb
- Responding to Costs,
75 kb
- Asymmetric Cost Adjustment,
68 kb
- Pricing Strategy Patterns,
185 kb
- Conclusion,
56 kb
- References,
128 kb
- Entire report,
444 kb
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