This is a common occurrence amongst large retailers, and for certain goods.  Although I would argue that many small retailers don't play that game.  It depends on your competitors.
Our single local store sells premium kitchen products and every product is sold at suggested retail.  We don't have special sale prices everywhere, just one price all year round and fairly constant mark-ups on all our products.  And for the few products which we sell that are also sold by the big guys, our regular price is usually the same as the big guy's sale price, if not lower.
Rule-of-thumb is if you see certain products always on "sale", that means the regular mark-up was too high to begin with.
I bought skis this past winter.  The same exact ski was $1,049 at a major retailer, and $749 at the local Calgary-based retailer.  Both skis were "regular priced".