News spreads fast I guess.
Still no drop at my store. We had a whole load of games go on clearance, but the 250gb PS3s are still at full price. From my understanding of the clearance system at Target, when and how much an item goes on clearance for is based upon a store's individual inventory levels and how well it's been selling. (Which is why you don't see items go on clearance at the same time, even if the stores are within 5-10 minutes of each other, and why we can't price match. Stores on a poorer side of town might not be selling an expensive item, but the well-to-do population on the other side of town have been buying that item up in droves, thus why would we put it on clearance?)
It's also worth mentioning that the 250gb model no longer has a shelf location, and hasn't had one for some time in our weekly revision labels. We've had to flex the label in to give it a shelf location in the beneath the video games, and even when this was the case, we still got shipments of 3-4 at a time. The absence of this model on the planograms might also clue you into why certain stores might have put it on clearance.
This is where my understanding becomes foggy, so I'm mostly making an intelligent guess, based off the past week's clearance drops, I wonder some stores are wired to automatically clearance items based off a preconceived rule set... either:
A) The item has marked as discontinued by the powers that be, but still have an existing shelf location. Once the weekly revisions come from corporate, and the discontinued item is removed from the planogram, instead of letting the item rot in the backroom until it's returned to the manufacturer, a store could automatically put it on clearance. A lot of stores saw this with putting Gears of War 2 on clearance. It completely disappeared from the shelf, and thusly could have triggered the automatic clearance response.
B) An item is still active, but has its sales floor location removed. (Like the 250gb PS3) Because it is still active, it's kept in the backroom until either the item becomes discontinued or it stays off a planogram for a certain length of time -- long enough for the system to say "well, it must be discontinued" and clearances it.
Stores will run differently, but I notice there's always a date when a massive set of stores that put an item on clearance all at the same time for the same price, and then select stores after that individually clearance their stuff.
I have to assume that this is a mistake, and this will only be for a limited amount of time. Especially since it was JUST released a few months ago, I seriously doubt that Target has just elected not to carry this console anymore.
, I'll give it a shot tomorrow.
