It isn't quite a long weekend here but many people including me have chosen to make a long weekend out of the Thursday Anzac holiday and have four days off. This has led to a flurry of advertising from retailers about weekend sales that must end Tuesday. Now I'm struggling to think of a reason why a sale must end Tuesday, other than the retailer is trying to create an urgency in the buyer to make a spur of the moment purchase.
Now these days with web sites like Pricespy, when I want to buy any reasonably large purchases I check the price history of the item I am buying. Generally item like laptops have a downward trend over time as new models replace the old ones and the price drops. Tere is a premium anyway for new things, they charge you a bit extra to have the latest and only start to discount things after the initial burst of earlier adopters has signed up.
But the beauty of Pricespy and similar sites is firstly that you can quickly scan all the prices retailers are offering for a given item, without leaving home (or these days without getting out of bed). You can compare the main retailers and the online retailers and decide whether you'll go to a bricks and mortar store or order it online. But you can also see the price history and know that in a sale three weeks ago they sold the item for three hundred dollars less. Some firms like JB Hi-FI will then let you use this information to ask for that price and this has saved me a significant amount of money on buying at the ticketed price.
So why should a sale end on Tuesday?. If you can sell the item for three humdred dollars off on a Monday then you can sell it for that on a Wednesday. I appreciate the retailer is trying to create urgency for the consumer to buy there and then, and I'm sure this works as many customers don't feel comfortable with asking for a cheaper price. Also some retailers don't allow there staff to barter, they have junior staff serving and give them no leeway to charge other than the ticketed price. These strooes usually seem to have a few bargains to entice you in, but overall you often won't get a good price at these stores.
There is no reason now to have a "must end Tuesday sale", it is almost certainly nothing more than a marketing gimmick to pressure a sales.
