Originally posted by: Windexed
I think they RARELY promote their prices on new dvds before the day of their release. I've almost never seen them print a price ahead of time, and the "pre-order" price on the website rarely matches the in-store price that Tuesday. Why? Because they don't want people to know their price (or their competition to know their price). They plain and simply want to get people into the store. By using the "low price" nonsense, they can gain customer interest while also not committing to a price, which may or may not be better than their competition's.
I think they RARELY promote their prices on new dvds before the day of their release. I've almost never seen them print a price ahead of time, and the "pre-order" price on the website rarely matches the in-store price that Tuesday. Why? Because they don't want people to know their price (or their competition to know their price). They plain and simply want to get people into the store. By using the "low price" nonsense, they can gain customer interest while also not committing to a price, which may or may not be better than their competition's.
The ads I've seen have always shown the price. They usually show it either on the whole page ("All DVDs this page $20) or they'll have a circled price touching the DVD. Not showing the price really has nothing to do with them worrying about their competition seeing their prices. Every store has their prices set a week or more in advance and they're usually set by the headquarters, not the stores themselves, so there's not much that any store could do to adjust their prices anyway. The whole point of price matching is that once you're in the store buying other stuff, they'd rather have you stay in their store and buy it from them. Sure, they may not make as much money as they could have, but they're still making money on it.
Having the prices match between the store and online has become a far smaller problem in recent years, at least with Best Buy. I know they use to tell people "Well, that's the online price", but now they even have it setup so you can check store inventory, so it really is the same price (at least around here it is).
And besides all that, it's just as easy to call all the local retailers and ask them what they're price is before even going to the store. This is how they do they're price matching anyway. If you don't have an ad, they'll call the store you're trying to price match to and verify the price.