Aila's Career Tips
Source: Ad Age Staff
At this level of inflation, we do recognize while we will drive all of this, it will or it may not be possible for us to just cover it from the cost actions, so we will take pricing. Pricing will be needed in selected markets and categories, notably Home Care.”
Career Journeys
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-Srinivas Phatak, Unilever, CFO
We are conscious of where the consumer dynamic is with some of the headwinds that we're seeing with gas prices and impacts on discretionary income. Outside of pizza, comparable sales were pressured by declines in size and desserts and lower new customer acquisition compared with last year. We now plan to invest approximately $18 million in supplemental marketing and franchisee subsidies to support our promotional strategy and this year's reinvigorated innovation calendar.”
-Todd Penegor, Papa Johns, president and CEO
Not too dissimilar to what we experienced in 2022, rapidly rising gas prices stress the balance sheet of the lower-income consumer that our business overindexes to. As a result, our same-store sales trend worsened during the quarter and resulted in a decline of 8.7%. If you exclude these unusual external factors, performance would have broadly been in line with our expectations.”
-Michael Skipworth, Wingstop, president and CEO
The gas prices right now, what we're seeing there is really more of the impact on consumer disposable income. And as long as that continues, I think that will continue to be a driver of both consumer confidence and what our customer is able to afford if gas prices are higher….”
-Russel Weiner, Domino’s, CEO
We've seen a little bit of check management in desserts and in alcohol.”
-Kevin Hochman, Brinker International, president and CEO
While many consumers remain resilient, others are under pressure due to persistent inflation, greater macroeconomic uncertainty and volatility driven by the conflict in the Middle East.”
-Henrique Braun, The Coca-Cola Company, CEO
I think the industry has been battling to be as affordable as possible, but the consumer hasn’t been able to really handle that. Seeing another wave of inflation is not what anybody wants to see, and nobody wants to be out there taking more price [increases], but it’s just the world that we live in—we have to be prepared for what could be yet again another unprecedented event. Nobody had in their plan a war in the Middle East.”
-Steven Cahillane, Kraft Heinz, CEO, told The Wall Street Journal
The consumer sentiment was already on a very low level by any historical standard, but the war in Iran amplified consumer concerns about the cost of living….This level of industry decline is similar to what we have observed during the global financial crisis and even higher than during other recessionary periods…We have issued the largest price increase in more than a decade that raised prices by more than 10%, and we're doubling down and accelerating our cost actions despite higher inflationary headwinds.”
-Marc Bitzer, Whirlpool Corp, CEO