Interesting. One of the reasons I prefer shopping at Trader Joe's instead of Albertson's is that they don't have constant stupid sales all the time. (Also because TJs is usually 30% cheaper.) Maybe groceries are different?
If you had a group of discount buyers shopping for chips, and split it in two groups …
- Group A sees a bag of chips marked down from $5 to $3
- Group B sees the same bag of chips for $3 as "retail price"
… you can expect to see more chip sales coming from Group A. Heck, you'd expect A to beat B even if the discounted price was _higher_ than the retail price.
Now throw "limited time offer" or "first 50 people" in to the mix and watch them fly off the shelves …
Force, you ask? Yes, basically. The prices will be like $9.79, or "Buy 2, get 3 free". So you can buy 1 for basically $10, or 2 for $20, or 3 for $30, or 4 for $40, or 5 for $20.
Recently cheese was $1.99 but "only if you buy 3." If you buy 2 they were $3.49 each. At least soda keeps a long time, but it's irritating to have to stock up on perishables or have to pay double.
If, however, you don't like to shop, and you do it solely to acquire things, you probably don't like sales.
Very clearly, Ron Johnson was in the latter category, while JC Penney shoppers were in the former.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/j-c-penney-apologize...