December 27, 2007
December 27 Dealhack Market Report Now Live at Dealhack
 The December 27, 2007 edition of the Dealhack Market Report is now live. The Market Report is a ten-minute podcast summary of what's going on in the deal shopping marketplace right now. Here are the highlights:
- Dealhack Market Review - What were this year’s biggest hits and most popular deals?
- Lightning Round - a quick rundown of eight great deals.
- Dealhack Deal of the Week - our pick for the best deal featured in the last week.
There are many different ways to access this Market Report:
+ Dealhack Podcast page
+ Subscribe via iTunes, Bloglines, Google, or Pluggd
+ Subscribe via Generic Podcast Feed (use with any feed reader)
+ Or just download the audio directly: Dealhack Market Report - December 27, 2007 (6.8MB; 9:52)
Read the Dealhack Market Review transcript after the jump.
Chris: This week, it’s all about clearance sales. While seasonal items are certainly on sale, this year, the clearance savings are far-ranging with plenty of current merchandise discounted alongside the wrapping paper and holiday cards and other time sensitive items.
Michael: 2007 was a huge year of growth here at Dealhack and we took some time this week to look back on this past year as we get ready for lots of new things coming in 2008. Today we thought we'd talk about what kinds of deals got the most attention from our readers throughout the year. So, Chris, what were the categories of deals that got the most attention?
Chris: Well, no big surprise, the top category was Coupons. People were definitely digging around looking for information about coupon deals and just behind that, our Clearance Section also generated a lot of interest. Also, with no great surprise for our history here at Dealhack, Computers, followed closely by Electronics, were the top two product categories. Although it was interesting because those priorities didn't necessarily carry through in some of the detail areas.
Michael: Well, tell us then about some of the most popular deals. What did you see?
Chris: Well, it was interesting. The very most popular deal that we ran, the one that got the most traffic was the Gap Clearance Sale that happened this fall. That was closely followed by some specials on refurbished Xbox 360s which was a big change in this new year. It was the first year that we had deals on those models coming through. And the number three spot was a Lucky Brand Jeans sale and it's interesting because it was from the Twice-Yearly Sale and we're back in that mode again now so you can take advantage of those savings again.
Closely followed beyond that were specials on iPods. iPods have been just tremendously popular all year round and we're always happy when we find specials and deals, especially when the models change over--there's just some tremendous savings on previous generation models.
Michael: Well, you've also been looking at some of your favorite deals of the past year this week.
Chris: It was a nice chance to go back and look at all of the different things that we've posted this year and see the trends that emerged. You know, we're out there shopping all the time so we see a lot of things and a couple stood out. In our most popular category, Computers, for the first time this year we saw discounts on the new high-end Dell XPS systems. We saw coupon discounts and other specials. Earlier this year we had some combined savings with a gift card plus coupons plus onsite sales and bundles. So those were some tremendous deals on some really powerful systems and, of course, we have some sales that are active on those now.
The other big area in the Computer space and certainly a favorite of mine were the Apple system deals, both on the Mac Pro systems and especially on the iMacs. It's been a great year for those systems, very, very popular, best sellers across the board. And, of course, Apple also offers some really special deals on refurbished systems. So that was good, but I have to say that the ones that, you know, when you think about the year, that were most interesting were the surprises. You know, with the XPS deal, no big surprise over how popular it was because it was a great deal and we expected a strong response. But sometimes you never know what people are going to be interested in. For example, the 50-movie DVD packs that are available for incredible deals, $15.00 or less, at Amazon were tremendously popular. So 50 horror movies, 50 mysteries...you know, these are not exactly current movies but they feature many classics including, several decades of cinematic history. These were tremendously popular and a lot of fun.
And then some others where, you know, I thought maybe the product was a little bit on the downswing, like the Canon SD1000. It's a great compact digital camera but, wow, when we featured a great deal on that, people were really interested. It's just a camera that has gotten great reviews so when folks look and compare it and realize, hey, this is a great item.
Another surprises over the last year was how popular and how valuable people found the specials on TurboTax, the online service. TurboTax really ramped up the quality of their online service last year and put out a much more functional product that included things like free filing and I'm sure we'll be seeing that again this year. That was something that our users really found very valuable.
So it's a lot of fun this time of year when we have a lot of those year-end reports and top-ten lists and things like that. But it's great to look back at what was actually popular. So it's not just what someone thinks was interesting, but it's what our audience really found valuable.
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