Deep TV Discounts Are Expected

By TWICE Staff -- TWICE, 10/18/2010

TWICE: What categories will be discounted more deeply than others?

Warren Chaiken, Almo: Our early indicators are showing deep discounts on flat-panel TV, DVD decks, netbooks and MP3 players. Mind you, this is subject to change based on category sellthrough results during October.

Fred Towns, New Age Electronics: Flat-panel standard screen sizes like 32, 42 and 50 inches in plasma, LED and LCD will be deeply discounted. The consumer will also see aggressive pricing on netbooks.

Rob Eby, D&H Distributing: TV displays seem to have the heaviest discounts, followed by notebooks and netbooks. There seems to be a certain amount of inventory in the channel to justify this. This is in contrast to last year, which saw shortages due to conservative inventory practices when the economy was tighter. GPS units will also see significant discounts since this technology is being incorporated into many other multifunctional mobile devices.

Bill Stewart, Petra Industries: We think promotions will be very aggressive this year for categories like flat panel TVs, e-readers, gaming, headphones, computer and netbook accessories and any accessory for an Applebranded item as retailers will try to lure early deal-hunters to their stores.

We began conversations with our vendors months ago about Black Friday deals because we wanted to begin the fourth quarter ahead of our competition. Our Black Friday promotions started the first week of October with our “Today’s Margin Maker” feature on the front page of our website where we highlight everyday a new deal that has a profit potential for our customers.

Doug Robison, DSI Systems: From what we can see at this point, all sizes of plasma TVs will be discounted, along with 32-, 42- and 50-inch LCD TVs — basically all leader products.

Doretta Raffio, ADI: Tablet PCs will be aggressively priced to try to take market share from Apple. I think we will see some aggressive flat-panel pricing close to the end of the year Blu-ray will continue to show deep discount pricing, but this year we will see a trend toward bundling players with movies to push more video sales.