Seeing is NOT Believing -- Part 5

Lowest Price of the Season

If you watch television, you will be familiar with stores that run sales for special occasions. It might be Back to School, Columbus Day, Lowest Price of the Season, or some such silliness. Some stores run two to three sales a week and in many cases the same items are on sale, for the same price.

Most states have laws regulating what can be advertised as “on sale.” To circumvent these laws, all a store has to do is have a “list” or “suggested” price and occasionally sell the item at that amount. Usually it is so high that no one would buy it; but tomorrow it will be On Sale again.

One crafts store is noted for having huge signs outside their building and announcements in their ads for “50% off all picture frames.” This sale has been running for years. In actuality, the price they sell the frames for is so high that even at the discounted rate you may not be getting a good deal.

Clothing stores are prone to special occasion sales since no one knows what the products actually cost to make, ship, and handle. Silk shirts may sell for $20 each, and next to them are silk ties, using a quarter as much fabric, requiring no buttonholes, buttons, and few seams, selling for more than twice the price. What is the justification? Two blocks away, at the same chain’s outlet mall store, the shirts may be “discounted” to $30 and the ties are selling for $15.

This is no longer a supply and demand market. Today prices are set by the store, and if the items do not sell they simply spend more money on advertising stating what a great deal the high prices are.

One of the reasons you can frequently get good deals in a discount store is not that the products cost less to make or are of lower value, but the stores do not spend millions weekly in advertising and then have to raise the prices of the products to pay for the ads.

Toothpaste is a good example. There are actually few companies manufacturing this product. Each may place the same formula in as many as three-dozen competing packages. The ones that advertise, the so-called name brands, have to charge two to three times what the unadvertised store brands get, yet it’s basically the same product.

Americans, and in increasing numbers others around the world, have been tricked into believing ads. You MUST have this specific brand (only available at this store), and you “MUST buy it now since it’s on sale at THE LOWEST PRICE OF THE SEASON.” Next week it will no longer be on sale, it will no longer be the same season, and the price will be 20% less.