In the furniture biz, lots of places have laws restricting how many days/year a given shop can do "going out of business"/"total clearance" sales. Otherwise, they tend to run them non-stop for decades because they are so effective at bringing in customers.
According to my friends that have worked furniture retail, it was common practice to mark everything up 300% for a week then have a "40-60% Off!!!" sale. Customers would be very excited about how much money they were "saving" even though the reality was that they were buying at a net markup compared to a few weeks ago. But, a few weeks ago the shop was much, much quieter even though the prices were lower. So, what's a shopkeeper to do?
In Europe, there are rules about sale pricing for all items, they have to be at the original price for a certain period. They still manage to game it a bit, but slightly less so, eg some items are normally overpriced etc.
What I have noticed recently in UK TV adverts is that £xxx off special offer and then put an on-screen rider "discount on 'after offer' price".
So they pitch it like a sale but really they will just offer whatever is left of their product at a higher price for a while in some store or maybe just online.
Also offers have to be changed every 3 months in the UK, otherwise it is no longer considered an offer/bonus but the standard price and has to be advertised as such.
There is a furniture store near where I live that was going out of business for 10 years. My wife and I always joked that they should have a "Proudly going out of business for 10 years" sign.
They finally went out of business last year. The business that replaced them was another furniture store which happened to be owned by the same people the owned the first. What gives with that anyways, is that some sort of tax gaming?
Some street vendors in downtown Washington, DC, used to have a sign over their table "Going Out For Business Sale". Whether they were hoping to lure the inattentive, amuse the alert, or both, I don't know.
According to my friends that have worked furniture retail, it was common practice to mark everything up 300% for a week then have a "40-60% Off!!!" sale. Customers would be very excited about how much money they were "saving" even though the reality was that they were buying at a net markup compared to a few weeks ago. But, a few weeks ago the shop was much, much quieter even though the prices were lower. So, what's a shopkeeper to do?