Am I the only one pissed off at these holiday sales? (US)
Am I the only one pissed off at these holiday sales? (US)
Infuriating to think that all these places can sell products with a 50% discount and still make money. The rest of the time how much are they raking in? But we are all scraping by and gotta do what we gotta do. Thanks for letting me vent.
You're viewing a single thread.
Usually the product being sold at 50% off are:
- things that would’ve been liquidated anyway
- things that aren’t actually 50% off. The base price was increased.
- crap to get you in the door because the retailer knows you’re going to spend more on other stuff during the holiday period
Back before Amazon (I'm sure it still exists I just haven't been in retail), on Black Friday we had a loss leader that would bring people to the store. In our case it was a pallet of DVD players. We priced them at break even at our cost to get them to the store so we would lose money on the sale if you accounted for labor. The goal was to entice people into the store so they would buy our other crap.
I wouldn't be surprised if "loss leaders" aren't actually losing money these days with how our Corporations are doing.
When I worked at Radio Shack, they had cell phones as loss leaders to sell AA batteries and those multi-tip charging blocks. The way management acted, it seemed like those were the only profitable items in the store. For some reason, they went bankrupt.
Okay, but let me know if you see a RadioShack.
There’s one near me, but in name only. It’s like a budget Sharper Image now.
Retail is still pretty cut throat. As someone that’s in retail for a big retailer, and is close to the sales data, I can attest to the fact that people are still wiling to break even or lose money on something if they think it will lead to a sale of something else. That’s really really common.