Paul McGowan of PS Audio ([email protected]) writes to us with his interesting take on the reasons retailers have sales.

Opening my email I noticed a audio retailer was having a sale and it was tied to a calendar occurrence.

Is it just me or do you think it’s strange retailers feel the need to tie a sale to a holiday or an event?

In most cases retailers put things on sale because they are not moving – lowering the price stimulates people to buy – and has absolutely nothing to do with the calendar event.

I sometimes see more honest approaches like “inventory reduction” sales, but for the most part it’s “holiday sale” or some such.

I think this behavior stems fromIt’s on sale! the way products are fixed in their pricing – the value of this product is X$ but for this brief time it is X$ less the sale incentive.  This helps maintain the agreed upon “value” of the product when it goes back to its regular price.

I admit I am not a shopper but it would hearten my engineer’s heart to see something like this:

“Sales are slow so we’re lowering the price for now”.

I am sure no one’s going to do this but ….

If you have a comment to make Paul would love to hear from you.