A question was asked recently, which has brought prices into sharp focus.
Has the see-saw prices of fuel affected the business in the past year or two? If the price of petrol, heating oil, gas, etc., rises, should the business raise prices to accommodate that knock-on effect? Similarly the question could be asked – should the business lower prices to match a lower fuel price?
It is a sad fact of life that fuel prices generally are always on the increase. Petrol is a valuable and widely used commodity and is always increasing all year round, every year. It should be mentioned that in fact, the Government has recently added more tax (two pence per litre) to petrol, making the price per litre rise over £1 for the first time. It is not the fuel industry adding the money here!
This is due to the price per barrel of oil touching $100, and jitters in the financial world about the oncoming winter, fuel stocks, prices, and so on. Again, nothing new. We always worry about having enough fuel for winter.
But petrol is not the only fuel. There is natural gas, dwindling supplies in the North Sea mean that the UK is now importing natural gas from Russia, dependant on another nation for our fuel supplies. Something to consider these days, is wind power, of which Lincolnshire (being a flat county) has an abundance of – we have a new windfarm being developed at Fen Farm in Conisholme by Ecotricity.
Also coal, and wood, admittedly not major fuels these days, but still something to consider.
Now on the other side of the story, we should consider that after Winter, come Spring and Summer, prices generally start falling as people tend to use less fuels (less need for heating houses). There is a nice chart showing the falling energy prices at SimplySwitch. This is a fine balance that we actually tend to ignore, since we notice the increases but seem to minimize the decreases.
Speaking from a business point of view, a similar effect could be noticed, as heating is not needed and we do not use energy on air conditioning (in the UK we don’t need it!).
So, would it be pointless to include energy and fuel prices in general sign prices as the rise and fall of fuel prices is both predictable (and therefore can be built into a sign price as a fixed median amount)? Or would it be a pertinent bit of the puzzle when figuring out how much a single sign, or indeed multiple signs, would cost? If the price of petrol, natural gas, and any other fuels continue rising above the rate of inflation should we raise prices accordingly?
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