Hi Again,
Thanks Pooch....a reasoned answer....but tell me, how are they gonna shift Howard the Duck at £13 a pop?? (BTW...check out IEDB reviews!).
It's down to market-forces, and/or the store trying to make as much money as possible from what it's already spent on buying the film in. For example, if HMV has bought X amount of "Howard The Duck" (not the worst film ever) at the equivalent of £7 each, then they won't want to sell it for less than say £10 each, in order to make some profit. However, if market-forces dictate that no one is willing to spend more than £5 on that film, then HMV has to decide whether to cut their losses and sell it at the lower price, or try to hang on in, until market-forces dictate that they do sell the film for at least £7 to break-even.
Having said that, it could also be the distributors saying that the film can't be sold in a store for less then X amount, until a set period of time has elapsed from the DVD's release date. If "Howard..." came out, say in April 2008, the distributors may say that HMV can't sell it for less than the absolute minimum of £13 for at least 6 months. Whether or not this kind of rule would dictate some kind of market price-fixing issue, I couldn't say.
Normally, it's ultimately down to a shop trying to make as much profit as possible where it can, on the most sale-able titles, and the less-popular ones being left to sell a few copies here-and-there, at full-price. You may even find the exact same title at two or three different prices in shops like HMV and Zavvi/Virgin, depending on if the title is in a 3 for £20 offer, part of a sale deal, e.g. £10 on X titles from X company, or whether a film has simply been forgotten about. This is fairly common on foreign-language releases and martial-arts titles, where you'll see copies of the same title available at both a sale/reduced price, and at the original, full price too.
Pooch