I’m one of the few people that still gets a newspaper thrown at their house every morning. On Sundays, the thud on my garage door is even louder as the paper is stuffed with advertisements from Best Buy, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. Unless I’m in the market for something, the first thing I’ll do is throw them all in the recycle bin and cut the size of the paper in half.

But, I was recently in the market for a 43” TV (I’d like to go bigger but my wife won’t let me demolish the built-in cabinetry that housed our original 36” tube TV…). So, I pulled out the Best Buy ad on Sunday 8/12/18 and saw two that were advertised. I naturally assumed these would be the best deals I could get that week. Fortunately, I work at gap intelligence and can easily see every 43” TV that Best Buy stocks, along with their net price after any special “discount.”

I specifically wanted a 43” TV with 4k resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate so I could watch the football team previously known as the San Diego Chargers lose with crystal clear clarity and no motion blur. As you can see in the below table, Best Buy actually had 11 different TVs that met these criteria. Those highlighted in orange were “on ad,” while those highlighted in green had an “in-store-only” instant savings.

In addition to the two that were advertised, Best Buy offered another six that were on sale but not advertised. In essence, LG and Hisense spent a considerable amount of money enticing me to go to Best Buy to purchase their respective TVs. However, once in the store (and in our database), I could see similarly-configured models from Samsung, TCL, and VIZIO that were also on sale.

Ironically, another model from LG that was not advertised offered everything I needed and, thanks to the in-store promotion offered that week, it was $50 cheaper than the one they had advertised! After doing some quick research, I found that the primary difference between the two LG models had to do with their smart interface and, since I use Roku for all my streaming activities, the TV’s smart interface didn’t matter to me.

The moral of this story? As a manufacturer, know that a lot of people don’t get newspapers anymore, so stuffing them with ads just creates more garbage that needs to be recycled every week. While most people now view ads through the retailer’s online “weekly circulars,” the products shown in these ads aren’t necessarily the best deals. Having gap intelligence as your “eyes and ears in the store” is the best way to ensure your products are priced competitively. Or, if you’re a consumer who is fortunate enough to have access to our database, it’s also the ideal tool for finding the best deal on a given product each week!

For more than 15 years, gap intelligence has served manufacturers and sellers by providing world-class services monitoring, reporting, and analyzing the 4Ps: prices, promotions, placements, and products. Email us at info@gapintelligence.com or call us at 619-574-1100 to learn more.