Record-high levels of oil prices are causing small business owners to re-think their business strategies.The increase in the cost of petroleum for our Ocean Omega business has become ever increasingly difficult in trying to stay competitive with shipping fees. We empirically study the effects of shipping fees and marketing activities on customer acquisition, customer retention, and average expenditures using data from our online transactions.

Transportation costs are rising, as is the cost of plastic bottles and
caps, which are made from crude. Rising gasoline prices affect both
individual consumers and businesses, but small businesses often get hit
hardest. Small businesses often don't have much of a financial reserve to
cover rapid increases in their cost of doing business.

It has been continually hard to maintain our quality level and not raise
prices.Rising oil prices have affected not only our delivery costs; but it
has also affected just about all our costs:The distributors are charging us more
because their costs are higher as a result of rising oil prices.When we
first began we did not charge for delivery, and then when the first gas
prices began to climb, we began charging for delivery to help compensate for
the expenses.We try not to pass the increase on to our customers. Therefore,
we still absorb a portion of the shipping charges of all of our orders being
processed.

I'm a customer also, and I also get tired of always having to pay more because
things are out of control.While we realize everyone is dealing with the same problem, the larger corporation is able to pass the increase on to their customers. If we were to do this at their same rate, we would not have customers to pass the cost onto for very long.

This is why we constantly strive to formulate special pricing, auto ship
programs, seasonal specials, multiple product discounts, and offer our fish
oil in larger size containers at a deeply discounted dollar figure to continue to provide a superlative product at competitive prices. The task at hand gets ever increasingly difficult.