PriceSCAN Press Release
7/21/09
4 Percent Decline in Plasma TV (40 – 49 Inch) Index Last Week
PriceSCAN Vice President of Financial Products Daniel Fehder commented that the Plasma TV (40 – 49 Inch) Index declined 4% last week. In total, the index has declined 15% since 4/24/2009. In the first four months of the year, the index showed strong price stability, showing no overall price change from the second of January to the end of April.
Jeff Trester, PriceSCAN Co-CEO and Chief Economist, noted, “The erosion of larger flat-screen television prices continues, and in some cases, such as 40-49 inch plasmas, appears to be accelerating. Neither post digital conversion purchases nor oft-discussed economic “green shoots” appear to be lending support to this sector of the consumer electronics market. While innovation may put downward pressure on current technology’s pricing, the sheer steepness of the price declines we’re now seeing makes it hard not to ascribe a substantial portion of these drops to flagging demand.”
About The PriceSCAN Manufactured Product Indices
The PriceSCAN Manufactured Product Indices are a set of 50 indices tracking a broad array of finished good prices at the retail level. The PriceSCAN indices are carried on Bloomberg's data service under the ticker symbol PRIC and are available on PriceSCAN.com’s website at http://www.pricescan.com/indices. PriceSCAN.com also makes available customized data packages for clients in the financial, technology and retail communities.
About the PriceSCAN.com Econometric Team
Dr. Jeffrey J. Trester is Co-CEO and Chief Economist of PriceSCAN. After graduating MIT and attending Yale for graduate studies in theoretical physics, Dr. Trester received his PhD in financial economics from the Wharton School. He has also served on the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s Business Council. Daniel C. Fehder is Vice President of Financial Products at PriceSCAN.com. A graduate of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, he can be reached for comment at analytics {at} pricescan.com
About PriceSCAN.com, Inc
Founded in 1997, PriceSCAN.com is a comprehensive price and product comparison service. Millions of consumers a year have used PriceSCAN.com to bargain hunt. In addition to price comparison, PriceSCAN.com offers objective vendor ratings, a price focused technology blog, user reviews, price trend graphs, and email price target alerts.
