BedCon

I was recently reading about the likelihood that mattress stores are more clever than their choice of business implies.

Now, I'm far from the first person to complain about this, but hopefully I can spread the idea and expand on it a little.
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Ever seen a "mismatched mattress sale" advertised by a local mattress store? There's a store in Tucson that does it at least annually. Apparently they end every fiscal year with mattresses of one pattern/color and an equivalent number of box springs of another pattern or color.

The most obvious question is, "How did that happen?"

The most obvious (probably incorrect) answer is that a lot of customers came into the store throughout the year and bought a mattress of one pattern set and a box spring from another set. This leaves the store with mismatched inventory by the end of the year.
However, if customers prefer mismatched sets in the first place, why would there be a sale on them later on? Clearly they don't need to "slash the prices" of mismatched sets if they're the best sellers. Besides, who in the hell chooses separate patterns when the sets are priced appropriately?

A less obvious, but more likely, answer is that the mattress store mixes up the inventory. That's right, they just grab half the mattresses from one side of the store and throw box springs around until everything is sufficiently mismatched. Why would they do this? Well, it's true that they do have inventory purchased at the beginning of the year that should be sold before it gets moldy, but the fact that the sale is on because the sets are "mismatched" covers for the fact that it's just a collection of the least popular brands and styles that were not previously sold.

So you ask the sales clerk,
"Why is this mattress set only $249?"
"Well, because these patterns don't match. You don't care about patterns do you?"
"Of course I don't! They're going to be covered with sheets anyway!"

So you think to yourself, "Wow, I'm getting an awesome deal because everyone else is too picky to have a mismatched mattress set. What a bunch of pretentious fools!"

At least, I'd be thinkin' that after such an awesome deal...

Unfortunately, NOBODY cares what the patterns on their mattress sets are. If this were not obvious enough, some web site has a survey that further dodges the true question...

The real reason that you are getting some sort of a deal - and you are getting a type of a deal - is that these mattresses are terrible, and you could have just gone to any furniture store during any time of the year and bought the same ones for even cheaper. Unfortunately, the mattress store will also throw in current inventory, mismatched into the fray, and charge the normal, higher prices under the similar "you're a clever customer for not caring about matches" heading.

So, as further evidence, pay attention to the next advertisement you see on TV for one of these sales, I guarantee you they'll make some reference to the patterns and the fact that "nobody sees them anyway!" as if every single viewer of the advertisement didn't already know this... They know everyone knows this, but they also know that everyone has no idea what everyone else knows...

They call this "asymmetrical information" in economics, by the way, and it's one of the most important ways for a business to protect its profits and position. Without really getting into it, I think I'd be confident in saying that we should probably ignore all stores' "blowout sales," as they are usually a way for the business to push more of the cost of improper demand measurement on us. I'll elaborate more on this some day...

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...And if you think you've got a question that will refute this post's assertions, I'll just go ahead and answer it before you ask. The answer is, "That's why they make 'em with patterns." If you just thought of one more, the answer to that one is, "That's why mattress producers hire economists."

ULTIMATE READER CHALLENGE 2007: Think of a question that would refute these assertions that isn't answered by those answers... I know there's got to be one out there somewhere...