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Panasonic Plasma Pricing Preserved
Electronics | Nov 30, 05
Last weekend's press coverage of Black Friday was chock full of crazed shoppers storming big-box retailers, driven to a slobbering frenzy reminiscent of the zombie film "24 Days Later" by the deep discounting of retailers desperate to avoid a holiday bust. A similar story was reported on "Cyber Monday", as online shoppers scoured the web for even deeper discounts, particularly in electronics. And indeed, regular readers of this blog are familiar with the steep declines we've seen over the last year in the prices of digital cameras, flat screen televisions and other chip-and-pixel goodies. So it may come as some surprise that the plasma televisions of one leading producer have actually seen a firming in price over the weeks prior to the biggest shopping day of the year.
Consider the Panasonic TH-50PX50OU and TH-42PX50U, currently the third and fourth most popular television sets on this site, respectively. As you can see from the graphs below, in recent weeks each of these units has seen a price increase in the lowest price offered by vendors on PriceSCAN.com of between ten and twenty percent. To be sure, both televisions are still down twenty to thirty percent since their introductions earlier this year. Yet to see a price rise in the lead-up to the holiday shopping period is intriguing. Perhaps, for some products, the demand is a bit stronger, and/or the supply a drab tighter, than the "you have to cut prices to the bone to drive sales" school of thought would suggest.
Time Period: 6/20/2005 through 11/14/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Time Period: 4/18/2005 through 11/14/2005
Each tick mark represents one week
Red = High Price, Blue = Average Price, Green = Low Price
Posted by jeffrey.trester (Permalink)
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Comments
In the long run this will definitely hurt Panasonic sales projections as just like me people will start to look elsewhere for their Plasma T.V. needs. It is no doubt that Panasonic has a high quality unit, but with the market in Plasma T.V. expanding and competition from LCD sets and other manufacturer who are increasingly closing in on Panasonic's quality edge at lower prices the game they are playing will spell certain doom. I would have liked to purchased a Panasonic Plasma for Christmas, but with high price I have opted to get another brand. Sorry Panasonic, I could wait no longer for prices to drop to reasonable levels!
Posted by: Willie at December 12, 2005 4:05 AM
