Fun With Data – Deciphering Holiday Discounts

Fun With Data – Deciphering Holiday Discounts 
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Each holiday season we are inundated with on-line and brick & mortar ads pointing to ‘gifts for less’, ‘guaranteed lowest prices’, and ‘Save Up to XXX%’ to lure consumers into at least looking at adds that seem to offer ridiculously low prices for an almost infinite range of items.  As our focus is consumer electronics, a narrower but even more intense slice of the holiday advertising onslaught, we check to see if random samples of those advertisements are able to stand a bit of fact checking.  Our most recent dive into holiday CE ads are those from Wal-Mart (WMT), known for its vast assortment of goods at prices lower than most local retailers.  As a CE retailer, Wal-Mart is in the top 5, but not quite known for the quality of its offerings or its concentration in CE when compared to Best Buy (BBY), Crutchfield (pvt), or more local retailers, but in terms of volume, they are certainly prominent,  so we looked to their latest ad to see how things stack up.
The most current ad for TV deals features a 24” HD Roku (ROKU)-based TV for $88 (yes, $88) made by ONN, Wal-Mart’s CE house brand produced by a company known as Durabrand (pvt), which is really a tradename owned by Wal-Mart.  The TVs sold under the ONN label are actually produced by Lenoxx (pvt), ALCO Electronics (328.HK), and Funai Electronics (pvt), with Funai typically the leading producer.  This set has HD resolution and little else other than Roku built-in (subscription needed), so for anything more than basic viewing, such a set would not suffice, and we expect such a deal is a loss leader (shipping is free), so the number of sets sold at this price will be relatively limited and will likely revert back to its ‘real’ price of $130, and is available on Amazon (AMZN) from a 3rd party seller only for $194.
Following the ONN deal mentioned above were a number of Hisense TVs ranging in price from $178 for a 40” FHD LCD TV to a 58” UHD 4K model for $298.  The problem is when the model numbers are checked, it appears that these TVs are models produced in 2018, which is a sign that they have been languishing in a warehouse until some manager said to get them out at any price to create space for new inventory.  We did find a few ‘deals’ at Wal-Mart that were from more identifiable brands.

• Vizio (VZIO) 4K UHD LED Smart TV (V505-J09) – A 50” 2021 model selling for $298 at Wal-Mart.  The same set was available on Amazon for the same price and sold in April of this year for $296, its lowest price (sold for $400 on Amazon in October of 2021), so the ‘deal’ at Wal-Mart (on-line only) was the same as what was available on Amazon.
• Samsung (005930.KS) 65” 4K UHD HDR LED TV – A 65”LCD TV (UN65TU7000FXZA) 2022 model selling for $478 at Wal-Mart.  The same set is currently $448 on Amazon, its lowest historical price, with the high being $550 seen in July.
• LG (066570.KS) 4K UHD OLED Web OS TV – A 55” 4K OLED TV selling for $997 at Wal-Mart.  Amazon has the same price currently but sold the set for $977 back in October of this year$1,400 at the end of May.

There were many more, although most were selling at or above the comparable Amazon price (when available), so the only real ‘deals’ were on Wal-Mart house brands.  This is similar to the typical discounting scenarios seen at Best Buy, whose Insignia (pvt) in-house brand is also produced primarily by Funai, also a TV set producer for Vizio, one of the top 5 global TV brands, whose major shareholders include Foxconn (2354.TT) AmTran (2389.TT), and Innolux (3481.TT).   All in, unless you have a very specific need for a relatively low-grade TV, don’t be pulled in by ‘holiday deals’  unless you check specifics about the actual sets being offered.  TV set companies do not make it easy for consumers to decipher the model codes (each brand is different), so it is easy to wind up buying older models, which could lack current features.  To illustrate, here’s how the model numbers of LG sets can be broken down, with the single letter ‘Q’ indicating the model year… 

LG TV Model Codes (2018 - 2022) - Source: en.tab-tv.com