If you look around the Internet this week, you’ll see any number of stories advising you on the best TVs (and best deals on those TVs) for watching the upcoming Super Bowl. Given all this attention, you might think that tons of people are rushing to stores to snatch up big screens. But this may be much ado about very little.
The folks at DealNews surveyed 1,200 readers who purchased TVs in the last year, asking them about which months they purchased their new sets.
The results of the survey indicate that while more people are buying TVs in January and February than they are in the spring and early summer, the number of folks snapping up new screens in the weeks leading up to the year’s single biggest sporting event is virtually identical to the number of people who buy them in the late summer and early fall.
And none of these months are anywhere close to the percentage of TV sales made during November and December. According to the DealNews survey, 50% of people made new TV purchases during just these two months.
“We found more evidence to suggest that sales are a big motivator for TV purchases, as the poll revealed that people paid less for bigger TVs,” writes DealNews’ Marcy Bonebright. “About 54% of poll-takers said they’d purchased a 50″ or larger class TV in 2013, and 66% of those buyers said they’d spent $1,000 or less on their big-screen sets. Better yet, 17% of big-screen buyers found an awesome bargain, saying they’d spent less than $500 on their TVs.”
Perhaps the motivation for all the Super Bowl TV-buying stories comes from the retailers who would love one last buying spree of full-priced sets to clear out the holiday inventory. After all, any number of pricing studies have shown that you’re likely to get the best deals on newer TVs in the weeks following the big game.
“Maybe buying a TV for the Super Bowl was the norm in days gone by, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore,” theorizes Bonebright.
A few years back, before he was ousted from his gig as Best Buy CEO, Brian “Football Season is Almost” Dunn revealed that the size of a Super Bowl sales bump was often related to how long it had been since either of the teams had been in the big game.
This is the Broncos first Super Bowl appearance since the end of the Elway era 15 years ago, though we doubt most Broncos fans have waited that long to upgrade their TVs. Seattle was in the big game back in 2006, so it’s possible that some Seahawks fans may be looking at the upcoming game as an excuse to splurge on a big honker of a TV.
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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