Feature 1: fabrication and dissemination of information on price increases, and substantial price increases.
Feature 2: Production costs and operating costs have not changed significantly.
Characteristic three: in a certain region or certain areas to lead the price increases.
Feature 4: hoarding, resulting in a substantial increase in commodity prices.
The old rules, let's first look at the terminology of price gouging.
Price gouging:
The speculators intend to force up the price level of trading activities, the means of spreading rumors and according to the price level slightly higher than the current price of input instructions. Price gouging is one of the means of profiteering by speculators, which directly harms the interests of consumers and disrupts the socialist market order, is a speculative illegal behavior.
Sourced from Baidu Encyclopedia
How to determine whether price gouging is an offense?
Let's take a look at some of its features:
Feature 1: Fabrication and dissemination of information about price increases, and a substantial increase in prices.
This is generally manufacturers put out false news of an impending price increase, resulting in a large increase in demand in the market.
Feature 2: Production costs and operating costs have not changed significantly.
Simply put, the manufacturer's costs have not changed significantly, simply for profiteering, choose to increase prices significantly
Features three: in a certain region or certain areas of the lead price increases.
Take our example during the epidemic:
Many of us needed home quarantine and quiet management.
Then the demand for the necessities of life would rise dramatically for a short period of time.
If you find that a certain brand of product, only in your area has increased in price significantly, you need to be on the lookout for possible price gouging.
Feature 4: Hoarding, resulting in a substantial increase in commodity prices.
To explain hoarding: refers to the hoarding of commodities, waiting for high prices to sell to profiteer speculative behavior.
This feature we explain, that is to say, rumor-mongering, profiteering, the first price increases, hoarding, are within the scope of the focus of the crackdown.
The above is an explanation of price gouging.
During the epidemic, there were still many times when the shelves of essential goods in major supermarkets were empty for seconds.
As soon as the epidemic situation starts to get serious, people will be very conscious of stocking up.
At this point, it's hard to tell whether the rush to buy things is a message put out by businesses or a spontaneous move by consumers.
But just like the third point above, we can keep an eye out if we find that a certain brand only increases its price in places where the outbreak is severe, and not so much elsewhere.
Finally, I don't think that during an epidemic, when the whole country needs to work together, there will be any businessmen who will do something like this, which is similar to "making a fortune from a national tragedy".
When the 2019 epidemic first began, our supply of masks could not keep up, and there was a need for mask factories to work overtime to rush to produce masks, and at the same time did not increase prices, but instead chose to reduce the price, and even free to support the front line.
Believe in the quality of our countrymen.
(References Baidu Encyclopedia)