Holiday shopping is up and running across Texas. In the cities of Tomball, Houston, Dallas, McKinney, and Lubbock many Christmas shoppers are finding the items they need to complete their list a their town's Costco Warehouse Store. The store is known far and wide for its over-the-top selection of items and its $1.50 hot dogs.

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Like most successful retail outlets the people who run Costco are constantly taking stock of consumer trends and shopping habits. Sometimes the changes in our behavior as customers affect the products and services that a business such as Costco might choose to offer.

Store managers use this consumer information to plan for inventory, plan for sales, and make plans to discount certain items or discontinue them altogether. Now, as far as understanding the "Costco System" for saving money. There is a trick. Here's how to decode a Costco price tag to maximize your savings. You're Welcome.

Sharon McCuthcheon via Unsplash.com
Sharon McCuthcheon via Unsplash.com
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One of the more difficult decisions Costco buyers and managers have to make is when they decide to discontinue an item. Anytime that happens you can guarantee negative feedback on social media. But just know this, if the product was really popular and selling well at the store, they wouldn't stop making money on it.

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Changes in consumer behavior have prompted Costco to announce that after January it will stop selling books in some 500 to 600 of its 800 locations nationwide. We can only assume that some if not all of the Texas Costco stores will be affected.

You may not have noticed but throughout 2024, Costco has been phasing out book sales anyway. Consumer trends suggest that people don't buy hardback or paperback books the way they used to buy them. Many consumers have switched to e-readers, Kindles, or other "high-tech" methods to read words printed on a page.

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Staff photo
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Now, if you have a "reader", a person who loves books and not an electronic tablet, on your holiday list you will be interested to know that depending on how book sales go at the remaining Costco Warehouses that offer them, the store could reverse the recently announced policy. Costco will also continue to offer books for holiday shoppers during the last few months of the year.

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Gallery Credit: Tara Holley

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