[kadoban]

If every person price matched every item, they'd be screwed, but: most people don't, many items just can't be, and if eg you're price matching a $20 cpu cooler, you may also be buying a $500 cpu or a bunch of other components that they'll actually make money on.

[roughly]

This is also why different stores have different skus for items - that $20 coolermaster 40mm with red LEDs is cm40rl-w at Walmart and cm40rl-a at Amazon.

[erkt]

Retailers will absolutely budge on this technicality, this is to disarm those that aren’t aggressive. Everyone’s retail margins are wayyyyyy higher than they want the consumer to believe and their holding costs are non-negligible.

[ryao]

I thought the purpose of that was to let them avoid price matching on certain items despite having price matching policies. I have never heard of one budging on this. Have any?

[erkt]

It is so the manager has a policy to fall back on to say no. It is just the second round of negotiation.

I am not saying everyone will play ball, but managers whose pay is a function of sales likely will. Have you ever negotiated buying a car before? Indicating you will let corporate know they lost a sale by not budging on price will almost always win the negotiation with managers who think they can just be lazy without consequence.

In the standard retail environment, I have definitely had businesses price match products with the same specs but very slight SKU differences, you just have to be open about a willingness to forego the instant gratification because that is the only service in person retail provides today. That might mean actually completing the sale online and then asking again. They know when there is actually a material difference to the products.

Businesses that are legit monopolies will not budge.

[ryao]

That is good to know. Thanks.

[fuzzfactor]

It's also so you can't buy the "same" item a year or more later after yours is out of warranty.

Which some people were known to do, and then return their old unit in the new box for a refund.

So model numbers are sometimes changed far more freqently than device characteristics or features are changed.