While a Regular Price Change is used to adjust the baseline selling price of an ongoing product, Clearance Pricing is a liquidation strategy. It signals to the organization that the item is dead. The goal is no longer to maximize margin; the goal is to convert the physical asset back into cash as quickly as possible to make room for new seasonal receipts.

Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM) and Pricing Cloud Service (PCS) treat Clearance as a distinct module with its own rules, zone groups, and conflict checking logic.

1. The Clearance Transition#

Placing an item on Clearance is a major structural change in RPM. It is a one-way street.

When a Clearance event is executed:

1. The item is marked as "On Clearance" at the specified locations.
2. The price drops to the new clearance retail.
3. The Lockout: RPM physically prevents any future Regular Price Changes from being applied to that item/location combination. You cannot raise the regular price of an item once it is in its end-of-life phase.

2. Successive Markdowns#

Clearance strategies usually follow a cadence of successive, deepening markdowns based on sell-through velocity.

• Week 1: 1st Markdown (25% Off). Target: Sell 40% of remaining stock.
• Week 4: 2nd Markdown (50% Off). Target: Sell next 40% of stock.
• Week 8: Final Markdown (75% Off). Target: Liquidate remaining 20%.

RPM allows pricing analysts to set up these successive clearances in advance. The conflict checking engine ensures that the 2nd Markdown price is strictly lower than the 1st Markdown price. RPM prohibits "Clearance Markups" (you cannot raise the price of a clearance item from $10 to $12).

3. Clearance Zone Groups#

As discussed in the Price Zones guide, Clearance often utilizes entirely different Zone Groups than Regular Pricing.

Why? Because the need to liquidate is driven by local climate, demographics, or store volume.

• A retailer selling winter shovels will put them on aggressive clearance in Texas by late February.
• The exact same shovel in Maine will remain at Regular Price until late April.

By mapping the Texas stores to an early Clearance Zone, the analyst can execute the markdown for that specific cluster without touching the profitable inventory in the Northeast.

4. Core Tables Reference#

(Note: These are RPM schema tables)

Clearance Header (RPM_CLEARANCE)

5. SQL Deep Dives#

Finding Items Stuck on Clearance

When items reach their 3rd or 4th markdown and still have massive inventory on hand, the clearance strategy has failed. These items are tying up shelf space and need to be pulled off the floor (RTV or charity write-off).

SELECT 
    il.item,
    il.loc,
    ils.stock_on_hand,
    il.unit_retail AS current_clearance_price,
    rc.markdown_number,
    rc.effective_date
FROM item_loc il
JOIN item_loc_soh ils ON il.item = ils.item AND il.loc = ils.loc
JOIN rpm_clearance_payload rcp ON il.item = rcp.item AND il.loc = rcp.location
JOIN rpm_clearance rc ON rcp.clearance_id = rc.clearance_id
WHERE il.clearance_ind = 'Y'
  AND ils.stock_on_hand > 50 -- Large physical quantity remains
  AND rc.markdown_number >= 3 -- It has been marked down at least 3 times
  AND rc.effective_date < SYSDATE - 30; -- The last markdown was over a month ago

6. Official Oracle Resources#

For further reading, consult the official Oracle documentation:

• Oracle Retail Price Management (RPM) User Guide: Clearance
• Oracle Retail Pricing Cloud Service: Clearance Management