The Rise of Premiumization

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Companies are jacking up the prices and saying higher quality is what justifies the increase. The thing that really convinced us that it was time to write this story was when we saw executives at WD-40 mention premiumization. And so once you apply that to other products, you start to see it just about everywhere.

Inflation happens for a lot of reasons that can be hard for even economists to fully grasp. But — as we learned this spring in an episode we’re rerunning today — there’s also a more straightforward reason prices keep going up: greedy corporations are using inflation as an excuse to jack up prices.

This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King.

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