On the morning of the 1st day of Tet, I went to a familiar coffee shop near my house, ordered an Espresso as usual. It was not worth mentioning if when paying, I had to pay... 59,000 VND. Seeing my slightly surprised face, the shop owner gently said: "Please understand, normally it's only 35,000 VND/cup, during Tet I have to increase it almost twice like that. In a few days it will return to the old price". I asked: "Return to the old price or increase to 40,000 VND?". The shop owner smiled again gently: "Then we have to see how the market is".
The main problem is here. Most consumers consider increasing service prices during Tet as very obvious. That price increase also has its reasons. Tet is a period when the supply of food raw materials decreases, transportation costs increase, and labor is scarce. Restaurant owners, especially small businesses, have to bear a series of fixed costs: renting premises, electricity, water, gas, waste, and employee salaries. If the selling price is maintained while input prices increase sharply, the risk of losses is real.
But what worries consumers is not only the price increase, but the increase and how it is increased. An increase of 5,000 or 10,000 VND is acceptable, but an increase of 15,000 - 20,000 VND for a bowl of pho, bun bo or a cup of coffee from 35,000 VND to nearly 60,000 VND still seems unusual at first glance. But what is worrying is that the price increase during Tet creates the risk of forming a new price level after Tet. The price of a bowl of pho, a cup of coffee and hundreds of other items has the opportunity to... increase slightly.
A lot of "a little" will create invisible pressure in family spending.
A survey by an online newspaper with the question "If restaurant prices after Tet increase simultaneously", up to 80% of people choose to cut out of eating out and only 20% agree to "accept". This shows the trend of cutting spending and saving more in the coming time.
What consumers desire is not "frozen" prices, but reasonableness and transparency. If the restaurant publicly announces the reason for the price increase, with a specific time frame, empathy will be higher. For example, the coffee shop owner frankly said: "To open a shop throughout Tet, I have to pay employees 3 times their salary. The price increase is to compensate for that cost.
But it is also necessary to admit that there is also a mentality of "following the tide" to increase prices during Tet. This is the issue of management agencies. The story of price increases after Tet also raises the requirement to more closely monitor the market. Increasing according to actual costs is normal, but taking advantage of the time to push prices indiscriminately needs to be controlled. Stabilizing the price level after Tet is not only an economic issue, but also related to social trust.
The problem is how to prevent the "Tet comes, prices increase, after Tet are new prices" spiral from becoming a default inertia and not establishing a new price level unreasonably. From a certain perspective, price increases lead to the psychology of "tightening spending" creating invisible obstacles to purchasing power, cash flow in circulation in society, negatively impacting production and business.
Therefore, price management after Tet is a big problem, not simply a bowl of pho, a cup of coffee with unusual price increases.
