If you have ever watched TV before, you’ve noticed that there's always some sort of really big sale that you shouldn’t miss. Macy’s One Day Sales and furniture stores that always seem to having a going out of business sale, appear to never end.
These sales are the perfect marketing scheme to drive the sense of urgency to purchase products at the same or slightly lowered prices you would find at during non-sale times. The companies that tend to have these almost continuous sales have been found to raise the prices on certain items and then lower them to the original price in order to seem like the consumer is getting a good deal on the product, even though they’re not.
The most blatant example of these never ending sales comes from furniture stores where they basically have sales for every minor holiday and most of the time just because. The reason for a sale I see most often is the “going out of business, everything must go” type of sale, despite most of these businesses staying operational for a multitude of years. If you’re in the market for a new sofa or mattress just wait until a sale happens because it’s more than likely that if there isn’t one currently going on, then one will start up within the next few weeks.
This type of predatory marketing allows for the companies and businesses to squeeze every last dollar out of prospective consumers because, consumers love sales. This can also lead to consumers spending much more than actually intended due to them seeing something that they might not have bought for full price on sale. Everyone is guilty of this, myself included, the amount of times we go to a store for one specific item and walk out with several more things than intended. This is exactly what businesses want, they want to pull you in with one thing then get you to buy more before you leave.
With it being tax season and considering everyone will be getting some excess money, companies like to throw up sales because they know that when people have extra spending money. Being not the most rational when it comes to money, we don’t exactly think about if something is absolutely necessary to purchase and tend to just buy the first thing we see and companies will take advantage of that, that why there’s always those little knick-knacks and candies by every register in every store, because they know we might just impulse buy them.
So when it comes to shopping, watch out for predatory sales, you may not always be getting as good as a deal as you think, and especially with people's tax returns coming in, don't let that money burn a hole in your pocket and go to waste.
Also: Never buy furniture at full price.
Logan Carr is a freshman studying anthropology at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Did you see the movie? Let Logan know by emailing him at lc300918@ohio.edu.
