Hisense Australia who after telling journalists that their products were in the entry level to midtier, TV market, then lifted their prices to be more expensive than some of the premium brands from Samsung, Panasonic and LG, is now offering retailers an additional “sell through allowance” in a move aimed at shifting slow selling stock at stores such as JB Hi Fi, Harvey Norman and The Good Guys.
The move comes after sales slowed and a recently launched advertising campaign failed to deliver the jump in sales that the Chinese brand was expecting.
Andre Iannuzzi the head of marketing at Hisense Australia has taken to not returning calls or responding to questions by email, so has his PR Company after we revealed that the Company had lifted the price of their TV’s by up to 100% over 2016 with some of their 2017 models.
Earlier this month we revealed that Hisense had moved to dramatically lifted the cost of their TV’s in Australia. See story here.
Questions have also been raised as to whether Hisense Australia are setting an artificial recommended retail price on their own web site for TV models currently being sold by retailers in Australia.
In the USA and the UK Hisense does not display pricing on their TV’s but in Australia they do. The only problem is that the price does not reflect the price that the same TV is being sold for at retailers such as JB Hi Fi and Harvey Norman.
For example, the Hisense 75” Series 9 has a recommended retail price of $9,999 on the Hisense web site. At JB Hi Fi, the same TV is being offered for $7,996, which is some $2,000 cheaper.
At Harvey Norman, the 65” Hisense N7 is being offered for $2195, on the Hisense web site the recommended price is $3,499.
A former Harvey Norman buyer said “I doubt that any retailer selling the Hisense range of TV’s is giving away so much margin as soon as they get a new range. This would mean that JB Hi Fi is giving away over $2K in margin on a 75” TV that is selling at Kogan for $2K both are Chinese brands with similar specs”.
Another former Harvey Norman TV buyer said, “The pricing on the Hisense web site is completely bogus”.
