Why do prices rise during cost of living crisis?

Because demand falls.

And margin exists.

No, you can't see demand fall by 50% WITHOUT consequence. We are not hobby 3d printers. It doesn't cost half as much to deliver half as much - the delivery costs- the publishers costs, distribution costs, retail costs - they all went up too, in the cost of living crisis..

Unless you are selling pdfs, all your costs went up and even if you are selling pdfs, your staffing and utilities went up.

If you are a residential customer, you have protection to a degree. But business is frequently hunt out to dry. It's expected that we simply raise prices to absorb additional costs, but raising prices leads to slumping demand.

Say you run a restaurant and your charge is 20 dollars a meal. Now you have to charge 30 dollars a meal. You might see your customers halve in the short term. Most of us take a hit - take the biggest hit we can to afford our margin during a recession - but there is always the temptation to rip the plaster off.

Cutting down or cutting out leads to falling demand, which leads to higher prices.

Essentials are usually kept low - but hey, know that people cut back to essential lines in a CoL crisis, supermarkets have raised the budget lines 20%. They are after capturing as much family income as they can, because they see the utility companies doing the same. They see landlords doing the same. Nobody wants a poor bottom line because they priced essentials too cheap, and the thing that kept supermarkets cheap was competition.

That's not a priority in an economy in freefall.

But food, rent and utilities are essentials. And thus like a tube of toothpaste, squeezing one end buldges the other.