When to Buy: A quick look at prices and how they change over time

• Posted: March 16, 2009
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• Author: stuart
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• Filed under: Advice,Buyers Guides
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• Tags: Advice, blu-ray advice, book advice, cd advice, dvd advice, price analysis

Ever wanted to know when is the best time to Buy a CD, DVD, Blu-ray or Book as a bargain? Is it on pre-release, release, a month later??? Here's some data and advice to save you money, explain how prices change, and allow you to purchase what-you-want at the cheapest price for you.

Summary

Here at the Ewelike Price and Product Comparison Site we like to ensure that our users get the best value all of the time.

To this end we’ve been doing a bit of data analysis (and we’re adding data mining) so we can determine when products are the best value – and thus when people should buy.

I thought I’d share a little of this analysis so that people could see why price trends for (popular) DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs and Books in the UK are important if you want to save money, and in this recession we all want to save money right?

If you don’t care how we worked things out then skip straight ahead to our advice on when to buy DVDs, Blu-rays, Books and CDs.

How we Calculated the Results and Drew our Conclusions..

From our price information (of which we’ve got a ridiculous amount – hundreds of millions of prices across a year or two for close to a million products) I limited the set of data using the following criteria (skip over the below if it bores you and you want to get to the nitty gritty!).

Criteria

1. I’d pick some POPULAR products for illustration, there’s no niche Jazz CDs or Books on Wargaming to be found in this list
2. The list and timescale are small, I started measurement a maximum of 4 weeks before xmas 2008 and ended at the current set of prices
3. I’ve limited the prices to those from a few major retailers (you can guess which ones but it’s 20 of the top UK sellers from Ewelike) – this stops rogue prices from appearing (where an Amazon.co.uk marketplace seller has a single copy to sell and charges a high postage value).
4. All prices are for brand-new products for EXACTLY the same product – there’s no “like-for-like” in this list.  If it’s not identical (packaging/contents etc.) then it’s not included as a viable price.

The Graph

Price Analysis - Blu-ray, DVD, CD, Book price changes over time for major UK retailers/stores - (start of) Dec 2008 -> (end of) March 2009

The graph’s a little complicated (mainly because I just want to share the inside scoop with you without worrying about reformatting the graph a million times) but if you follow each product (and it’s type) then you’ll see the trends.  Don’t worry though, if it all looks like a blur and hocus-pocus then I’ve also added my interpretation and advice based upon it (and the other information we’ve crunched to make decisions) below.

Results – Price Changes per Type

The results are a surprise for most people but they apply to a lot of the products we compare week-in-week-out.

The main things are:

• CDs typically have a lower price for a few weeks on first release, this then climbs for the next 10 weeks or so to nearer the retail price before it decends again
• Blu-rays are a high value product and start off at silly levels, they slowly decend in price but are currently holding their value well across time
• Books will be discounted heavily like CDs for the first few weeks of release, again this will climb back to nearer the RRP before decending again.  However, be careful after 26 weeks of sales the prices can vary enormously.
• DVDs are very predictable, pre-release you can get a reasonable deal against the RRP and this continues for 2 weeks or so post-release.  After that the price will continually decend over time.  If you can wait for 13 – 26 weeks after release then the cost will likely be half of the original price (and may be included in 3 for 2 offers or other bargain offers).

So, when should I buy a DVD, CD, Blu-ray or Book?

• CD – Buy on release or wait a while – if it’s something you really want then set a price alert on it (for a single non-special CD then £8.o0 is probably achievable).  If it’s a special release or limited edition (and you think it won’t sell out) then hang on – the price will come down a lot and you can snap up a bargain.
• DVD - Unless you really really want it then hang on keep the faith and it will reduce in price.  There’s no best price alert to set so just set something you’re happy with.
• Blu-ray - Buy as a pre-release when the stores are competing or hang on and keep your fingers crossed the price will reduce.  For the savvy buyer then Region Free blu-rays are available via other sellers where you can get a version of the movie from the USA (or elsewhere) at a much better price (and sometimes with much better special features on them)
• Books – If it’s a popular price then follow the same advice as CDs, however also remember that you can await the paperback/soft cover release of the book and get a good saving that way.  Also after a few months then books also become available as used/secondhand copies – if you’re going to read it on the beach and not worry about how it looks afterwards then used books are a great way to save money.

Tools to Help You Bag Bargains on Ewelike

On Ewelike we work really hard to ensure you get the best prices we can get hold of.  Other price comparison services only show prices for which they’ll get a cut of the sale – if a retailer won’t give them money to click-through to their site then you won’t see it.  We’re different – we show you the best prices we can find regardless of whether we get paid or not.  If you find the best prices then it doesn’t matter if we don’t get a fraction of a percent of the sale, you’ll come back and use us again because you can trust us.  See our Ewelike Mission Statement for more information on who we are and what we’re all about.

We also have a new tool that we’ve opened up in the last few months – the price alert.  With this you can tell us your email address and what you want to pay and we’ll let you know if and when it ever hits that price.  We only use the email address for that reason and only that reason.

Ewelike also allows our users to login and set preferences – if you love play.com and always want to see their prices first then that’s something you can do.  Alternately if there’s a retailer you hate then we can automatically hide it for you.

For Books especially (although this applies to CDs and DVDs too to a lesser extent) we’ll show you the used prices for those books too – alongside the maximum postage charge for that retailer.  Sometimes it makes sense to buy secondhand books because they can be such a bargain.  It also allows you to find books that are out of print.

It’s worth checking the auction tab in the prices area incase somebody on eBay has a bargain for you to look at…

Lastly, we’ve got bookmarklet tools so you can easily find products on ewelike – so even if you’ve found your product on amazon or another site then it’s easily to quickly check with ewelike if it’s the best price.

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