Pricing turkey dinners

Here's a hearty perennial this time of year: Tallying up the typical cost of a Thanksgiving meal. The story is essentially a rewrite of somebody's press release and always gets at least some attention - even if it's virtually useless as any sort of economic measuring stick. After all, you're dealing with a bunch of variables involving location, quality of product, quality of food chain, volume of purchasing by chain, rate of inflation, and so on. What I did notice was a Bloomberg analysis that found Target running a few bucks cheaper than Walmart: $45.48 versus $52.31. From Bloomberg:

"Target has been pretty clear, through their actions, that they want to have a very competitive holiday season so it's not surprising that it translated over to food," Bartashus said in an interview. While Target is "clearly trying to bolster sales with promotions," Wal-Mart promotes everyday low prices and doesn't do much discounting, she said. As holiday shopping heats up, so has competition among retailers to lure customers with the lowest price tags. Target, based in Minneapolis, has said it will match prices in stores with items online at large rivals, including Wal-Mart and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) Target's loyalty card also offers 5 percent off purchases.