Consumer prices up a bit in March

Costs are inching up slightly at the gas pump and grocery checkout, according to the Deseret News' monthly pricing spree.

But those consumable goods still cost about 10 percent less than they did a year ago, when the shopping trips began.

In April 2008, as gas prices were driving up blood pressures and grocery costs, our cartload of 15 items — from a specific type of jeans to gasoline, laundry soap, diapers, orange juice, cookies and bananas — cost $137.37. Those same items at the same stores cost $123.81 on Wednesday. In March, they totaled $121.44.

The month-over-month cost increase might have been higher but for a great sale on the brand of bread we checked. It cost 37 percent less; by mid-month, it's likely to be back where it was.

Shoppers also will see that some manufacturers, rather than raising prices noticeably, have instead chosen to slightly downsize products. Last April, you could buy 144 Huggies diapers. Then the packaging was changed to 100, and now it's 96. The price fluctuations over the course of the changes have now returned the per-diaper price to where it started.

Orange juice and the cost of a movie ticket have not budged in a year. But milk, corn, bananas, eggs, hamburger, cookies and other items have yo-yoed quite a bit.

What drives prices can be a bit of a mystery, barring a huge increase in transportation costs, which seems to get passed on every time in every business, said Dave Davis of the Utah Food Industry Association. "Food pricing is not unlike health care, in the sense there are so many things that factor into pricing," he said.

Damaged crops drive up costs for products like orange juice. And sometimes a retailer wants to "get more aggressive, with steeper cuts" in hopes of wooing more shoppers into his store. The beauty of that, Davis said, is the benefit to the consumer in terms of lower prices and more choices.

"How good you are on the back end drives prices, as well," he said. "Every time someone touches a product in the supply chain, it costs money. If it gets touched multiple times before it hits the back door of the retail store, you're losing your margin, and that drives prices, as well."

E-mail: lois@desnews.com