Festive season calls for tempting deals, here's how to avoid being tricked

A few weeks after e-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart are done with their ongoing sales, physical stores will inundate shoppers with special festival offers. While the prices on many products are indeed lowered, e-commerce as well as physical retailers use tricks to make you spend more, or to make you purchase goods they want to sell.

Retailers exploit human psychology to create feelings of fear, excitement, or pleasure and thereby influence decision-making. Changing industry dynamics have also given them the power to offer higher discounts.  “If retailers had 35 per cent margin a decade back, it has now gone up