Panasonic’s email to Club Panasonic members Monday touting sale...

Panasonic’s email to Club Panasonic members Monday touting sale prices that were below minimum advertised prices from several of its retailers for four Viera TVs (CED Sept 12 p4) contained erroneous information, said Judah Zeigler, director of commerce for Panasonic. Zeigler told Consumer Electronics Daily: “Unfortunately, the email that was sent to our Club Panasonic members contained incorrect pricing information.” Panasonic planned to correct the pricing Tuesday in “another email to our Club Panasonic members about this error,” he said. Zeigler said the error occurred “when the email was being coded for transmission to our members.” The actual prices on the four models listed in the email “are higher than the prices that were shown, and Panasonic sincerely apologizes,” he said. Zeigler said Club Panasonic members “always enjoy exclusive offers not made available to the general public.” In compliance with Panasonic’s Minimum Advertised Price Policy, “the only way for Club Panasonic members to see these prices is to be logged in to the Club Panasonic store and to place the item in their shopping cart,” he said. “Without doing this, a Club Panasonic member will instead of a price see the message ’see price in cart,'” he said. Shoppers can always remove the item from the cart, he added. “This is not to say that the prices that were in the email were correct,” he added. “They were not, and the prices that are being offered to Club Panasonic members are higher than those that were shown,” he said. The growth of Panasonic’s e-commerce business is an “important component of Panasonic’s overall market strategy,” Zeigler said. “However, Panasonic is committed to achieving this growth in a manner that is complementary to our authorized channel partners, and therefore we are committed to consistent and complete compliance with the Panasonic MAP policy,” he said. Some prices shown in the original email to members were roughly 10 percent lower than prices for the same products at high-volume retailers, we found. Although the email information was wrong, the website prices were always correct, so no customers could order at the erroneous bargain prices.