Black Friday Deals & Matching Markets
With Black Friday less than a month away, I thought it would be fitting to show the connection that Black Friday deals have with matching markets. Lots of retail stores offer price match guarantees on most of their products during the duration that their sale runs. However, this often does not account for BOGOs, out-of-stock items, or even select items. Not to forget that the price-matched item has to be from a reputable seller that the store you are trying to price match at recognizes as a competitor. Retailers such as Walmart are placing more restrictions on the already strict price match policy, stating that a customer can only price match one item per day, not to mention that you are not allowed to discount stack at stores such as Amazon.com, Target, Walmart, etc, just to name a few.
How Black Friday deals relate to matching markets is the very strict policy that they are running, the price match guarantee. All these stores will have the price say for a TV, and each store may be running different deals. So even before the Black Friday deal is applied the same exact TV at stores that carry it may have it priced differently, creating a ranking of who is offering it for the cheapest, and who is charging the most. If you were to show Best Buy that Target has the exact TV that they carry but for $100 cheaper, in a sense, this has created a second price auction of sorts, where although the buyer is buying the same product type they are paying the second lowest price (instead of highest). And thus because of the lowering of prices by each store and price matching, other factors are in play such as defective items, returned items that were opened, and even the availability at the store that you are trying to price match at, because if they don’t have the product in stock then the buyer can’t purchase it. Due to the nature of the buyer wanting to purchase the item in question at the lowest price possible, the price of the good is often driven under the value the buyer values it at, maximizing the buyer’s profit.
Article:
https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/these-stores-will-have-black-friday-price-matching-guarantees-this-year-but-there-are-exceptions/