Hhgregg Follows Online Christmas Day Sale With Post-Holiday Deals
Heavy pricing pressure continues on TVs, we found in a scan of post-Christmas shopping deals both in-store and online Wednesday. Hhgregg continued to hammer its email list with offers, promising sale prices up to 30 percent off and an additional 5 percent savings on TV and appliance purchases of $499 or more through Saturday, according to its mailer. The leader deal is a $149 ProScan LED-backlit TV, it said, followed by a Samsung 43-inch model chopped by $100 to $399 and an LG 60-inch plasma on sale at $799, down from $1,399. The four-day sale follows a Christmas Day pitch from hhgregg offering a 10 percent shave on prices for online purchases of $499 until midnight.
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A visit to New York CE retailers Best Buy and P.C. Richard Wednesday morning revealed a sleepy day-after-Christmas environment loaded with TV deals. While we expected to encounter a line of shoppers returning gifts to swap for better, newer or just different items, there was no line at customer service at the Best Buy Union Square store. The overall mood was quiet with a modest amount of foot traffic.
As customers entered the Best Buy store via escalator, they were surrounded with stacks of boxes filled with 32-42-inch LCD TVs from Samsung, Toshiba, Insignia, Westinghouse, Sony and Sharp. The best price we found was a Best Buy-branded 32-inch Insignia LED-lit LCD TV, shown for $229, and we counted 55 cartons ready to sell on the sales floor. About 20 Samsung Series 4 32-inch LED-backed LCD TVs were slashed by $100 to $279, and 22 Series 4 LCD TVs were available for $269, down from $329.
Step-up TVs were in healthy supply, too, we found, and at very attractive prices. A Samsung 40-inch Series 5 LCD TV with ConnectShare was cut $100 to $449, with 20 models on the floor, while there were 17 Samsung 40-inch slim LED-lit LCD TVs on display. Sales Manager Mike Krawczyk told us the number of unsold TVs on the floor this holiday season wasn’t unusual. The store “always tries to keep out as much as possible on the floor as opposed to back in the warehouse,” he said.
Down the street at P.C. Richard & Son, numerous TVs were on their second price cut of the season, we found. A Panasonic 32-inch LCD TV started out at a $349.99 list price, was trimmed to $319 and was selling Wednesday for $258.74. A Samsung 32-inch LCD TV dropped from $349.99 to $329.97 to $248.91, arriving at the price of a Coby 32-inch LCD TV that had started at $399.99, according to the sticker.
In response to our questions about the heavy discounting and glut of TVs at retail this holiday season, a Samsung spokesman told us pricing is based on “a variety of factors” and he couldn’t elaborate further “except to say that we are committed to offering tremendous value to consumers.”
The steep discounts coincide with reports of a slower-than-expected holiday sales season. MasterCard’s SpendingPulse data from Dec. 25 indicated retail sales grew by just 0.7 percent from Oct. 28 through Dec. 24 this year, according to published reports, which cited Superstorm Sandy, economic worries and the Sandy Hook shootings as factors that impacted holiday shopping. ShopperTrak, which measures store traffic, set the tone last week for a disappointing holiday season when it narrowed its projection from a 3.3 to a 2.5 percent gain for November and December (CED Dec 20 p6) versus the last two months of 2011.