Level 2 · Check and compare the price rise in Excel

What the sheet holds

Priya’s export has one row per product whose price rose on March 1, 2025, limited to the 19 products launched before 2024, so each was on sale for the whole of both springs:

column	holds
A, B	product and category
C, D	the old and the new price, from the order lines
E, F	units sold March–August 2024 and March–August 2025, completed orders

J7 holds the comparison from the rest of the catalogue: products whose price did not change grew their units by 9.2% over the same months.

Step 1: check before you compare

An export is someone else’s query. Before using it, check that it says what it claims. Each product’s change as a share is

=D2/C2-1

filled down from G2 to G20 and formatted as a percentage. Then two summary cells:

=MIN(G2:G20)
=MAX(G2:G20)

If every rise sits close to the announced 6%, the export holds the right products. A row at 0% or 60% would mean a product that should not be there, or a typo in a price.

Step 2: like for like, against a control group

The question is whether the raised products lost volume. Comparing March–August with the six months before would put the holiday peak on one side, so the sheet compares the same months a year apart. And because the whole store grew this year, the raised products’ change only means something next to the control group: the products whose price stayed put.

Total each year first, then compute one change from the totals:

E21  =SUM(E2:E20)
F21  =SUM(F2:F20)
J6   =F21/E21-1
J8   =J6-J7

Reading the result

J6 shows that the raised products grew their units 21.0%; J7 shows that unchanged products grew 9.2%. The difference in J8, 11.8 percentage points, is in favour of the raised products: there is no sign the rise cost volume.

That is not proof that raising prices caused growth. The 19 products may have been gaining popularity anyway; without a test where some products keep the old price at random, an analysis like this shows an association. Say so in the recommendation.

Pitfalls

• Averaging a per-row percentage column gives every product the same weight. Change the totals.
• A difference of two percentages is in percentage points.
• Typing 21% into J6 instead of a formula breaks the sheet the next time Priya refreshes the export.