Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE: CC) has apparently joined the 21st century as it has announced it will feature the same retail pricing on its website as in its physical stores. While this is hardly newsworthy, it does point out an area that retailers consistently get wrong when it comes to the customer experience: making sure the experience is the same regardless of which buying channel the consumer lands at.

Why Circuit City would announce something as pointless as price continuity across its stores and website smacks of some kind of holiday desperation for the upcoming sales season that has already started in all reality. While it's not the only retailer to have different pricing on its website and its retail locations, it's probably one of the largest.

Circuit City marketing head Jeff Maynard told the AP that "it's no secret this holiday season is probably one of the most important ones in our history as a company, and with these equities in place, we feel pretty good about it." From the translation booth, Maynard seems to be saying this is a "do or die" holiday selling season, and that the company may be in slightly better or absolute worse shape come January, after holiday sales figures have been released. It's hard to imagine Circuit City building any kind of good trust by doing something like syncing prices along its various sales channels, but perhaps that's the only remaining chess move the company has.