Originally Posted by garysgal
What I wonder is why, when you go to a store, apples (for example) are 1.29 a lb. then the next week they are on sale for .99 a lb. they don't sell a lot that week either. so the next week, when the sale is over, they are back to 1.29 a lb. If they could afford to sell them for .99 why not keep them at .99?
Grocery stores have weekly "loss leaders". These are a few items that are put on sale at less than wholesale price, thus they are sold at at loss. But they bring people into the store, and the store makes up the cost with the other items that people buy at the same time. At the same time, a particular store may get a shipment of say apples at an especially reduced rate, so the price for that one shipment may be lower. It's fairly complicated.