How India's Festive Sale Discounts Trick Shoppers — SkimNews
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- Amazon's Great Indian Festival launched on October 8 with Flipkart's Big Billion Days opening the same day, as Amazon Pay reported one in two customers opted for EMI financing and Flipkart said one in three shoppers chose No-Cost EMI.
- Mint's festive price tracker spotted genuine markdowns — the Apple iPhone 17e 256GB fell from ₹98,900 on September 24 to ₹71,999 on Amazon — but also caught the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch rising from ₹1,66,990 to ₹2,00,490 on Amazon before a 7% "discount" was applied; Amazon India told Mint independent third-party sellers set those prices.
- Biju Dominic, chief evangelist at Fractal Analytics and author of MicroStimuli, said platforms weaponise scarcity and loss aversion through countdown timers, set visual price anchors via strikethrough "original" prices, trigger dopamine through discovery, and deploy large-crowd imagery as social proof.
- Vivek S.G., a SEBI-registered investment advisor and founder of Wealth Crafts, warned that some brands exist "purely with a higher MRP" to display 70-80% discounts, urging buyers to verify multi-month price histories before checkout.
- Vivek also cautioned that "no-cost" EMIs typically carry non-refundable processing fees — "there is a huge difference between low-cost and no-cost EMI" — and called mindless scrolling "the single biggest trigger" for unnecessary purchases.
- Both platforms leaned on card-linked incentives: Amazon offered 10% instant discounts on SBI credit cards, while Flipkart matched with 10% instant savings on Axis and ICICI cards, alongside trade-in exchange bonuses.
Why it matters: One in two Amazon Pay users and one in three Flipkart shoppers entered EMI arrangements during the country's biggest shopping window, while the price tracker showed the MacBook Air rising roughly 20% above its September 24 price before displaying a "discount" — meaning headline savings can be illusory and credit-driven buyers face processing fees stacked on top of EMIs.
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