The big box stores near me quite having sales except for Menards. Lowes and Home Depot just put out fliers during the week in the mail that advertise what they have in the store but no sales/discounts. Is this happening in other parts of the country as well? I live SW of Chicago by about 30 miles.
They also don't advertise in the Sunday paper (Chicago Tribune here) like they used to as well, maybe it because we are in-between seasons?
Rich
newspapers are lbeing hammered by the net, near full collapse. with circulation way off stores are looking for more ways to advertise.
newspapers in 10 yers will look vey different if they still exist
Very large companies like that have essentially decided in some cases that it is not necessary for them to advertise locally. Wal-mart even does this in some markets. Everone know where they are and what they have so no local adverts are needed. National television ads continue. Inserts that used to be in the paper are handed out at the store or just placed in baskets.
It seems they found that there was no difference in sales whether they advertise locally or not. Essentially it has become an unecessary expense for these huge players. When eliminated, it goes directly to the profit statement. I also agree with the comments about newpapers.
Yes, in Baltimore. I really disliked it at first because I felt that they were trying to trick us into thinking those items were on sale. But now I'm used to it and I just don't look at them. In my case that might be a net loss for them, but I don't buy much on impulse anyhow.
Supermarkets too, the Baltimore-area Giant (not to be confused with the Harrisburg area Giant) especially, have given up big reductions and have mostly small ones. Not as small as Shoppers which sometimes takes 3 cents off a can of vegetables. Maybe it's my lack of understanding because even though sometimes I've had no money handy, I've never been poor and never been short of food, but I don't see even for a poor person 3 cents is going to make a difference. Maybe if someone buys 10 cans at a time. Anyhow, that is the direction that Giant is going. I think for them it is largeley because of their bogus cards. Inconvenience cards, that you have to hand over to get the sale price, Nuisance cards, annoyance cards, cards they use to spy on you and what you eat. I'm glad I didn't give them my real name or address.
Anyhow, I think they learned that 80% of the sale deductions were retrieved by 20% of the people, or some such numbers so they don't see big reductions as a good idea. This is bad for me, because often almost everything I buy is on sale. For one thing, otherwise it's hard to decide what I want. If nothing were on sale, I'd have to spend twice as long in the store.
FWIW, I like to go to different supermarket chains and even within the same chain because different items are sold, or the same but differnt items are placed to attract my attention.
Harbor Freight btw does all sorts of things. They some times have catalogs where everything is "on sale", and sometimes ones where one thing on each page is on sale but the others aren't. That one item has a bold box around it, but you probably have to be looking for the bold box. It's not bold enough to insist that you look at it first.
And of course some of their things are "on sale" so much that it would be almost foolish to buy them at regular price.
It's probably safe to assume that if you've stopped seeing sales, then all the local Mom & Pop hardware stores have conveniently been put out of business. It's a strategy I like to call "Survival of the Fattest."
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