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.
My friend worked at Best Buy corporate some ten years ago. He got the corporate discount at stores so we went to check it out. Most of the big name stuff had almost nothing. So their margins were pretty thin there (not to say those companies couldn’t sell their products for less just that BB wasn’t getting most of your cash).
But for their in-house stuff like anything Insignia, the cost of a $20 HDMI cable went to $4. And that was a discount so BB was still making something.
I’ve started to become super jaded about discounts, especially at grocery stores because now I’m not looking at it like “wow I’m saving on eggs” but rather “so you’re probably overstocked and want me to bail you out or you’ll lose a shit on of profits if these go bad”.
It depends, sometimes sales are at a loss for the company to simply clear out stock that they were not selling quickly enough.
I just hate how commercialized the holidays have become.
Isn’t weird that we only have one day to celebrate Thanksgiving, but we have fucking Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday right after Thanksgiving?
Those are all based on the commercialization of Christmas, of course.
Most of these “sales” are bullshit and we are outright being lied to regarding pricing.
Should be illegal, but it’s not.
JCPenney got rid of sales years ago and went with a year round price based on the discounted price. The CEO who had the idea was later fired because the company was losing a lot of money and sales were down compared to other retailers.
The constant sales are done because the retail strategy works.
It gets more mildly infuriating when you notice that they’ll typically jack up the prices just before a “Sale” to make it seem like a better deal.
See the Anchoring Effect.
I worked for Walmart many many years ago, and this pissed me off to no end. On Thursday I would have to go through and increase the prices on everything that was going to be on sale the following week. Then Saturday morning I had to change all the prices back to what they were (or just a sliver lower). Then I would get bitched at for putting the wrong sign in place (these were supposed to get the “Rollback” signs, not the “Sale” signs, ffs).
Hated that job.
I feel the same way about grocery store club cards. “Let us vacuum up your buying habits to sell to information brokers while simultaneously ripping off everybody that doesn’t use a card.”
I worked in retail grocery, but I would imagine the situation is the same in other retail outlets. Everybody who has replied so far has a piece of the answer. Sometimes the sale item is a “loss leader,” sold below cost to bring customers to the store, where they’ll buy other products at the same time. Sometimes the price is jacked up before putting it on sale to hide a price increase, or take advantage of the anchoring effect. Sometimes stores take a loss on a product that isn’t selling well, and they just want to get rid of it to free up space. And sometimes the store’s buyers got a really good deal on purchasing inventory, for many possible reasons, like a bulk purchase, supplier clearing the warehouse, or pre-booking the order well in advance. (Manufacturers often give discounts for guaranteed purchases.)
But, yes, as you suspect, sometimes the markup is outrageously high, and they can still make a profit when offering 50% off. (Not often in grocery, which is a low-margin business.)
50% tends to be the approximate price a retailer will have purchased an item for from its distributor. If they are selling something at 50% they are likely losing money on that sale given operating costs. It’s either a loss leader or they are emptying back stock.
Where are these magical 50% off sales? I haven’t seen any discounts on stuff worth buying this year (or last).
Craft stuff does legitimately go on sale. Fabric always gets deep discounts, and sewing/craft machines and tools also get a decent discount. It’s a great time to pick up stuff for a hobby you’ve kind of been interested in but weren’t sure you wanted to drop the money on it.