that's dealing a double whammy to smaller companies like phillp's. it's not only paying higher shipping costs, but spending a lot more to gas up its own delivery trucks. chairman and c.i.o. jim phillip doesn't think business is brisk enough to hike prices to his customers, so he's cutting costs where he can. >> we do work very hard to manage our delivery costs, so we use technology like cell phones, g.p.s., computerized address checking to try to keep our other costs under control so we don't have to pass them along. >> reporter: mesirow financial economist diane swonk agrees that raising prices on discretionary products and services in the current economy is a huge gamble. >> it adds to the unevenness of the recovery. in fact, we've already seen this in the consumer sentiment data, which showed that all of the improvement in the consumer sentiment in february came from among the wealthiest households who could care less about these higher energy prices. there was an actual deterioration in consumer sentiment among the poorest of households, who have