Sentence decomposion task of the day (from the "假冒iPhone" Expansion)

Whoa, that's really got me in a spin.

商家把增加的成本转嫁给消费者。 Increased costs are passed on to (shifted onto) the consumer The rest is just why the costs have increased and in what ways (various) they're passed on. 因为 A 而 B 而 usually gets translated simply as "and", but often it seems to be used as a "cause-and-effect connecter". At least that's how I think of it. It hasn't been added to the grammar guide yet.

The company, re: the because-of-improved-service-quality increased cost, by various means shifted [that cost] onto (转嫁 给) the consumer(s).

The key is the 的 before 成本 -- once you identify everything before that as a modifier on 成本, the sentence becomes pretty clear. Since 把 essentially moves the object forward in the sentence, it's got to operate on a noun. So when you read sentences like this, the key is finding the object regardless of how much crap has been put before it.

Thanks everyone! The first hurdle for me was 转嫁 which dict.cn translated as "marry again", which did fit in as neatly as expected... The next was the "而". aeflows "因为 A 而 B" lifted the fog.