Well, it seems that yes, in fact, yesterday was quite an interesting traffic-laden day as people struggled with rushing to and from Circuit City stores, jamming roads and doing circles in parking lots while waiting for their accomplices within the stores rummaging around and looking for some sort of “special deals” to be found.
Given that, since yesterday, the amount of discounting has been considered by a lot of the shoppers polled to be “so-so” (30% for furniture, 20% for CD’s and DVD’s, but 10% for everything else), the amount of actual buying seems to be fairly low. As a results, many people spent their time browsing in a frustrating manner, with several people loudly proclaiming to their children that they would be heading shortly to the nearby Best Buy [BBY] to check for any discounting on the same items they saw at Circuit City, or just look for something better-priced to get.
In a couple of cases that I witnessed, the Circuit City stores were less than 2 km away from the nearest Best Buy, so making that quick hop to the competition was not difficult.
To check the atmosphere at the Best Buys, I headed over there after those two nearby Circuit City stores… It seemed like business as usual at Best Buy, with the typical ebb and flow of customers standing and getting processed out at the checkout lanes. It seems that, even with the liquidation discounts at Circuit City, there are still plenty of items that are better-priced at Best Buy.
For example, one area which pricing tends to be fixed and controlled is, of course, video games and video gaming hardware. In several cases, Best Buy had older and second-tier Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games at lower prices than Circuit City, even when you consider the 10% discount being offered yesterday. On the other hand, Circuit City had already been lacking several of the titles that were observed at Best Buy.
The discount rates will most likely be increased at the Circuit City stores over the next few weeks, but the available inventory would also be dwindling. So if you’re still looking for that “awesome” bit of electronics, you may want to wander over to your local Circuit City to make sure it’s still there by the time the price point hits a level that you’re comfortable with.
