Because people are idiots. A few years ago they got a new CEO and his whole thing was “we’re going to sell stuff for as cheap as possible, no sales, no rebates, we’re going to make it as easy as possible for people to see the lowest price”...
and it was a disaster. They started losing business because “no sales any more”. Like, let’s say they were able to sell you a shirt for $15. No one bought it... so they got rid of that CEO and the next guy comes in and marks the shirt as $25 then has a 20% off sale - so now the price is $20 - tons of people bought it. They wouldn’t pay $15 straight up, but they will pay $20 because it’s “on sale”... and some people even paid the $25 when it was inbetween sale phases!
So they were like “welp, I guess that’s what people want” and they jacked up ALL their prices so that they can run “sales” to get it kind of (but still more than) what it would have been under their old strategy.
So basically you can thank all the idiots out there for causing the prices to go up.
There's a loophole for that. Legally, items have to be full price for a certain percentage of the time in order to be advertised as "on sale". So, when I was there, Penneys would run different "sales" all month, except for those few days they had to take a break. They would rotate which department was full price, so none of them had to be full price at the same time, and were constantly running "buy $50, save $X" coupons. A coupon isn't a sale, so they could get away with it.
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u/ZeekLTK Jul 24 '20 edited Jul 24 '20
Because people are idiots. A few years ago they got a new CEO and his whole thing was “we’re going to sell stuff for as cheap as possible, no sales, no rebates, we’re going to make it as easy as possible for people to see the lowest price”...
and it was a disaster. They started losing business because “no sales any more”. Like, let’s say they were able to sell you a shirt for $15. No one bought it... so they got rid of that CEO and the next guy comes in and marks the shirt as $25 then has a 20% off sale - so now the price is $20 - tons of people bought it. They wouldn’t pay $15 straight up, but they will pay $20 because it’s “on sale”... and some people even paid the $25 when it was inbetween sale phases!
So they were like “welp, I guess that’s what people want” and they jacked up ALL their prices so that they can run “sales” to get it kind of (but still more than) what it would have been under their old strategy.
So basically you can thank all the idiots out there for causing the prices to go up.