I've been shopping different TJ stores for nearly 30 years but in the past couple of years, the one closest to me has giveaways. This isn't often but enough to take notice. My guess is that slow moving or seasonal items are given the heave-ho at random. Almost every store manager I've talked to says it's about constant movement of products. A few will mark items way down but I once visited a store that sold gingerbread pancake mix in the spring.
Not sure about giveaways, I don't think I've never seen any at a Trader Joe's. They do sometimes have sales and discounts, but compared to other supermarkets and grocery stores it is one of the ones I go to that have the least discounts and sale items, at least where I live.
Similar to wholesalers I think giveaways helps to sell a particular product. Something a customer may not purchase unless they've tried it before, for example a new flavor, product or upcoming brand. Also, a lot of times the person giving away the free samples works for the company of the product being given away not the actual store. Free giveaways are a major way to gain product/brand awareness.
Not only at any trader Joe but also another types of businesses do this. Is desirable to prevent stale merchandise sales as much as possible, thus go heave ho! and giveaway with bargain sale is a strategy to reduce the amount of losses.
Trader Joes, in my experience, like Aldi (its parent store), has markdowns, but on the whole, the everyday prices on most things are just the cheapest anyway. I don't follow the Trader Joe's sale circular (they have one every week) but I do for Aldi and try to stock up when seasonal produce is especially cheap. Our TJ's does a giveaway drawing every week for a gift certificate ($20 maybe) to the store. You get entered when you bring your own bags. They give you a ticket, you write your name on it, and put it in a bucket on the way out. Then they post the winner's name each week. I guess for them it is worth $20 a week to encourage bringing your own bags. I love it but don't shop there often enough to make my entries luckier, or whatever.
