Mark McQueen, my go to guy for all things debentures, has a blog post up on what he calls Recessionary crosscurrents. He’s starting a list tracking the good/not so good points about our current economic climate.
To wit:
3. LCBO is selling 2005 Latour for $1,895 a bottle, well up from the price they wanted for the Futures. Positive.
4. Best Buy has sales some days and doesn’t even put the signs up in the store. You find out at the cash that the item you were going to buy is cheaper than you had thought. Negative
There’s more at the blog and he is inviting you to post your signals. Go post one, it might make for a great list/book/movie!
How could the best buy scenario ever be in the best interests of best buy?
The purpose of a sale is to draw in customers who otherwise wouldn't have come, or to do some price discrimination and sell to someone who wants the product but couldn't afford/justify the full price.
In this case, you have an unadvertised sale. Therefore no new customers, and the customer was willing to buy it at the higher price is now getting it for less.
I suppose this could be some sort of long term good-will benefit for best buy, but that seems rather theoretical for them, rather than the guaranteed loss of profit.
Posted by: Jason Coyne | April 20, 2009 at 12:33