It's on sale!

Opening my email I noticed a audio retailer was having a sale and it was tied to a calendar occurrence.

Is it just me or do you think it's strange retailers feel the need to tie a sale to a holiday or an event?

In most cases retailers put things on sale because they are not moving - lowering the price stimulates people to buy - and has absolutely nothing to do with the calendar event.

I sometimes see more honest approaches like "inventory reduction" sales, but for the most part it's "holiday sale" or some such.

I think this behavior stems from the way products are fixed in their pricing - the value of this product is X$ but for this brief time it is X$ less the sale incentive. This helps maintain the agreed upon "value" of the product when it goes back to its regular price.

I admit I am not a shopper but it would hearten my engineer's heart to see something like this:

"Sales are slow so we're lowering the price for now".

I am sure no one's going to do this but ....