Black Friday and Bicycles

sms

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Nov 23, 2015, 2:44:56 PM11/23/15

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I notice that Nashbar has a 20% off everything sale this week and their
sister company performance is having a Black Friday sale starting tomorrow.

Doug Landau

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Nov 23, 2015, 3:18:50 PM11/23/15

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On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 11:44:56 AM UTC-8, sms wrote:
> I notice that Nashbar has a 20% off everything sale this week and their
> sister company performance is having a Black Friday sale starting tomorrow.

Those $10 sale tires are lumpy.

jbeattie

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Nov 23, 2015, 4:52:33 PM11/23/15

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On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 11:44:56 AM UTC-8, sms wrote:

> I notice that Nashbar has a 20% off everything sale this week and their
> sister company performance is having a Black Friday sale starting tomorrow.

Nashbar has a new and different sale every day. A lot of times, they're faux sales -- for example, there is a 50% off sale, but it's 50% of some unbelievably high MSRP that nobody charges. Then the next day, it's only 20% off, but its off the regular Nashbar list. The bottom-line number stays the same. It's like starting with the result and creating new and different formulas to achieve it. Some of the sales are for real, so I'm not going to dis Nashbar.

-- Jay Beattie.

Doug Landau

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Nov 23, 2015, 5:45:34 PM11/23/15

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In any case I stopped buying conti road tires on sale for $10 from them after concluding that it was a bad batch.

DougC

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Nov 23, 2015, 5:46:42 PM11/23/15

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I have noticed that some websites play a shell-game with their
prices--but the odd part is, they don't all move the same way.

If you are shopping online for a particular item and you check a given
website for the price, it might say $50. If you check back later that
day it may say $57 (most usually seem to give the lowest price on the
first recent encounter) or may say an even-slightly-lower price of maybe
$48, even though no sales are indicated.

I'd assume that they are playing into the psychology of online
comparison shopping, but some play it the opposite way than the other
do. ???

I have asked on a couple web/retailing forums and nobody knew what I was
talking about. It's definitely a real thing out there tho.

I am hesitant to say actual examples, but none of them were bicycle
websites. It's not marketplace sites like Amazon; it's places that have
their own websites. The ones I've seen are computer parts or electronics
parts places.

somebody

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Nov 23, 2015, 8:14:32 PM11/23/15

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On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:44:52 -0800, sms <scharf...@geemail.com>
wrote:

>I notice that Nashbar has a 20% off everything sale this week and their
>sister company performance is having a Black Friday sale starting tomorrow.

Yes, and all those "deals" are from price increases in the previous
months. J.C. Penny raised their prices before going back to their
"sale" strategy after everyday low prices failed.

Andre Jute

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Nov 23, 2015, 9:02:51 PM11/23/15

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On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 10:46:42 PM UTC, Doug Cimperman wrote:
> On 11/23/2015 3:52 PM, jbeattie wrote:
> > On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 11:44:56 AM UTC-8, sms wrote:
> >> I notice that Nashbar has a 20% off everything sale this week and their
> >> sister company performance is having a Black Friday sale starting tomorrow.
> >
> > Nashbar has a new and different sale every day. A lot of times, they're faux sales -- for example, there is a 50% off sale, but it's 50% of some unbelievably high MSRP that nobody charges. Then the next day, it's only 20% off, but its off the regular Nashbar list. The bottom-line number stays the same. It's like starting with the result and creating new and different formulas to achieve it. Some of the sales are for real, so I'm not going to dis Nashbar.
> >
> > -- Jay Beattie.
> >
> I have noticed that some websites play a shell-game with their
> prices--but the odd part is, they don't all move the same way.
>
> If you are shopping online for a particular item and you check a given
> website for the price, it might say $50. If you check back later that
> day it may say $57 (most usually seem to give the lowest price on the
> first recent encounter) or may say an even-slightly-lower price of maybe
> $48, even though no sales are indicated.
>
> I'd assume that they are playing into the psychology of online
> comparison shopping, but some play it the opposite way than the other
> do. ???
>
> I have asked on a couple web/retailing forums and nobody knew what I was
> talking about. It's definitely a real thing out there tho.

I know what you're talking about. It is psychology taught in applied economics courses to marketing students and MBAs.

The idea of the higher price on your second visit is a reverse Dutch auction; I named it that, as a joke on the guy who invented it, Kees Hogenbirk-Wijnberger. The hope is that if you see a higher price the second time, you panic and buy the item in fear of the price rising higher still.

Showing you a lower price second time round is riskier but still decent psychology. The idea here is that you will think it is a mistake and grab the item in fear that the price will be put back up. But there is a substantial group of cool risk-takers who may conclude that the price will fall further still, and who will simply wait in the hope that the trader gets desperate. I always do, and it is very rarely that I'm disappointed either because the price doesn't fall further or because the item sells out at the low price.

If a sale crosses a weekend, notice that the price is high on Friday evening when people feel flush and falls over the weekend until, usually on Monday, it reaches it's lowest point before they start playing games again. I named this sequence "the lion's roar" after Buzz Buzolich's remark, "When I first started working, we were paid fortnightly. In the first week I roared like a lion, in the second week I squeaked like a mouse."

Lotta topclass motivational psychology is amazingly down to earth.

Andre Jute
What's the point of an expensive education if you still pay full retail?

sms

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Nov 24, 2015, 11:27:12 AM11/24/15

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The 20% off applies to everything, even sale prices.

Nashbar is famous for doing "compare at" with its prices, which has some
validity for private label items. They do have some decent complete
bicycles.

I've been looking for a mountain bike for the spousal unit. Nothing
fancy since we're not hard core, but at least with disc brakes
(mechanical), and a low-stepover "women's" design frame. Nashbar has one
on sale with 20% off that would suit her, and the closest equivalently
specced bike at a shop is about 2x the cost.

In fact, if I stick with a 26" wheeled frame, Nashbar had the only one I
could find. I hate to start dealing with yet another wheel size, I
already have 16", 20", 26" and 700c to deal with, and two tube sizes
each for the 26" and 700c. But 27.5" seems to be the new normal.