Researchers tracked the prices of six to 10 big ticket items at seven national chains – Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Sears and Target for 44 weeks starting in June 2014.

Some of the stores did run valid sales – limited-time price reductions on the selected merchandise. But Brasler said Sears, Kohl’s and Macy’s offered what he called “fake” sale prices.

“It’s shameful what they’re doing,” Brasler told NBC News. “They’re making it appear that this is a special low price, when in fact, it’s always their price. And often, it’s not even a low price, if you took the time to compare.”

• Sears had what Checkbook called “the most egregious always-on-sale practices.” Eight out of nine items tracked, were almost or always on sale. Two were on sale 44 out of 44 weeks.
• Kohl’s had eight of the nine items checked on sale more than half the time during the 44-week survey period. Four were always or almost always offered at sale prices.
• Macy’s had one item almost always on sale and four that were on sale 70 percent or more of the time. Two items Checkbook monitored never went on sale.

Incidentally, Sears effectively slit its own throat during the '10s when it on-boarded a hyper-libertarian CEO who tried to maximize profits within the various internal holdings of the company itself.

The Sears story is a textbook tale of how failures to centrally plan your economy and reliance on market gimmicks to drive traffic can undermine the core business model that drives value creation in a company.