Some months back, we were shopping at Auchan with a friend here in France, talking about a zone in the center of the hypermarket set off to offer cheaper products – buy cookies and candies by the pound and off-brands of staples like coffee and sugar. Our friend said he wasn’t sure that it was a great sales strategy, because, as he put it, “the poor don’t like to reminded that they’re poor.” Au contraire, we answered - where we come from, everyone likes a bargain. In the US, you’ll see fur coats raking around in the No Frills Zone.
Chez nous, saving a buck is no shame, for those that got and those that ain’t got alike. But complication sets in when you consider also to what point those that ain’t got still count on getting a flat screen TV. In fact, we suspect that the right to bear flat screens was on the way to becoming Amendment 28 before the news turned gloomy enough to be noticed even by people who don’t use their flat screens to keep breast of the news.
Well, on Thursday, Panasonic slashed its annual profit forecast by 90% - blaming a “nasty economic cocktail” that included a rising yen, write-downs and of course – a drop in flat screen sales. Add that to the events of this year’s Black Friday – the day after Thanksgiving when stores attempt to get themselves “back to black” by slashing prices and opening doors in the wee hours of the morning. This year a Walmart employee was trampled and killed when he opened up to a desperate crowd in Long Island, New York., and two people were killed in a gun battle outside a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California. Watching the news reports of sales all over the country, you’ll see flat screen TV’s figuring prominently.
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