Black Friday Comes Early at Target, Where E-Commerce Deals Abound
Between what industry observers have called a sluggish back-to-school selling season and the crucial upcoming holiday season, Target is holding its “biggest electronics event of the year,” the company said in an email blast to customers Wednesday. The sale runs through Saturday, it said.
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Shoppers looking for TV deals don’t have to wait for Black Friday, we found on the Target website, where deals included both 2011 and 2012 items. Among TVs, a Westinghouse 55-inch 1080p LCD TV was slashed $200 to $599 in a deal available only online, and the Samsung LN32D403E2DXZA, a 2011 model with a list price of $349, was marked down to $279 for customers who added the 32-inch 720p 60 Hz TV to their carts to see sub-list pricing. “Some manufacturers require their product to be advertised at their suggested price,” Target said when we clicked on the TV. “This item is being sold below that price, and is displayed only when placed in your cart.” Samsung’s universal pricing program, which covers 2012 high-end, large-screen TVs in its 8000 Series (CED April 5 p1), doesn’t apply to the 32-inch 2011 model or most other TVs on the Samsung site. Bestbuy.com, meanwhile, showed the LN32D403E2DXZA for $329.
Elsewhere in TVs, LG’s 32-inch 32LS3400 LED-backlit LCD TV was discounted to $299 from $429, Target.com said. Among Panasonic plasma TVs, the TC-P50U50 50-inch TV took a $100 cut to $699, the full-featured 3D 55-inch P55UT50 was chopped $300 to $1,099, and the 60-inch P60UT50 was dropped $500 to $1,299, the website said, with all three models’ pricing only available when consumers placed the items in a cart. Mitsubishi’s 92-inch WD-92840 3D 1080p DLP was sale-priced at $3,279, well off the $6,999 list price but higher at Target than at Newegg.com ($2,729) and Amazon.com ($2,999).
Blu-ray player prices have now become solidly lodged in the double digits, despite three-figure suggested retail prices, we found. Panasonic’s DMP-BD87 with built-in Wi-Fi had a temporary price cut to $94 from $119, and the Wi-Fi-ready DMP-BD77 was shaved 11 percent to $79, a price matched by Blu-ray players from Sony and Samsung. A Toshiba 2011 Blu-ray player was cart-priced at $69, down from $99. Among the few DVD players shown, the low-price leader was a $34 Sony DVPSR210P.
Target customers shopping for digital cameras will find good deals among top brands including Nikon, Canon, Panasonic and Sony, we found. A Nikon S8200 16-megapixel point-and-shoot camera with 14x optical zoom was discounted 39 percent to $199, and 16-megapixel models with 5x optical zoom were shaved 17 percent to come in at $99 on the website. A Nikon 26x mega-zoom camera was dropped from $279 to $199 in a “temporary” price cut, it said.
Within a tablet slate dominated by the iPad, which was not discounted, tertiary brands Maylong ($64, down from $97) and Double Power ($99) brought tablet pricing at Target online to under $100 for entry-level low-memory, low-power Android devices. Asus and Acer models filled the mid-priced level with Android tablets generally in the $300 range.