The Dirty Tricks Behind Amazon & Flipkart Sales - Future IQ

60,555 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jul 11, 2025

Slog Reference: How to shop smartly during “BIG” online sales

Description

Ever wondered if those massive online sales like Amazon Prime Day, Flipkart Big Billion Days, Myntra’s End of Reason Sale or GOAT Sales are really helping you save money — or just cleverly pushing you to spend more? This episode of Future IQ uncovers how these “BIG SALES” use smart psychological tricks to make you buy things you didn’t even plan for, and often the more expensive versions too.
From fake scarcity tactics like “only 1 left in stock” and social proof nudges showing “3 people just bought this,” to decoy pricing strategies and sneaky anchoring that makes discounts look irresistible, there’s a whole marketing game happening behind the scenes. We also reveal how retailers quietly inflate prices weeks before the sale, only to drop them later and advertise it as a huge discount.
This video dives into why tempting credit card offers work so well, and how your brain’s quick decision system (System 1) often overpowers your logical side (System 2) during these flashy sales. With practical tips on using tools like Keepa and PriceHistory.in to track real prices, and why shopping with a no-nonsense friend can actually save you thousands, this episode will change the way you shop forever.
So before you get swept away by the next big sale banner, watch this and learn how to shop smarter, save better, and never fall for these clever traps again.

Join the Future IQ Community: https://tapthe.link/futureiqwa

More Videos:
Why Diwali Was Never About Religion: https://youtu.be/_AByBm35DgI
Why you're addicted to shopping - Psychology Of Persuasion: https://youtu.be/lEvzk05XzOg
You Are Paying More Than Others: https://youtu.be/gyyVUjInirg
The Dollar Value Of Your Time - How Much Are You Worth An Hour?: https://youtu.be/gyyVUjInirg
Mastering Both Your Brains - System1 & System 2: https://youtu.be/DIVTMooO7o4

Links:
Book: Influence the Science of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Many examples of decoy effect: https://arpitsrivastava.com/marketing-examples-of-the-decoy-effect/
Are you a System 1 or System 2 thinker? https://www.psytoolkit.org/survey-library/thinking-style-rei.html

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

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How to shop smartly during “BIG” online sales

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Transcript

- If you are Indian, you know that big online sales are happening. Yeah. There is the Amazon Prime Day sale. There is the Flipkart big billion now called the Goat sale. Mntra has end of reason sale. And all these sales are designed to make you buy things that you didn't want to buy. And for the things you wanted to buy, they want to make you pay more for it. They are designed to end your reason. Yeah, kind of. But uh really they're designed to make me pay more. It's a sale. Navin, don't you remember we did an episode on the psychological tricks that sales and marketers use to make you pay more while thinking that you are paying less.

0m 38s Yeah. Yeah. So, this episode is about showing you examples of some of those techniques in use, examples of some new techniques that we hadn't talked about last year and what you could do to at least counter some of this some of these because they are clearly way more intelligent and way more shatter in that regard. But let's begin with these tricks please. The most common trick is fix scarcity or urgency. Right? only one left in stock, only 17 minutes for this deal. And you know, pretty much any site you go to, any page you go to, there will be one of these things happening right there. Right? Take a look at this example. Limited time deal. When we were

1m 20s prepping this episode, I took the screenshot and now while shooting, I clicked on that link again and the same limited time deal is still there. Okay. So, it wasn't really limited time. Yeah. Navin sir while shopping we also know that this is a fake offer but we still fall for it. Absolutely. This is the key part of the trick right which is that even if you know you're still going to fall for it and so we will talk about this later what to do about it but that is why it works even though it is so common. The fobbo is very real, Lavine, and there is no way to escape it. And the way they

1m 56s make this even more real is by convincing you that everybody around you is doing this and you are the only loser who is not getting this lovely excellent deal, right? Yes. That is trick number two. Social validation, right? So take a look at this example. 900 plus bought in this month alone. Yeah. Because when 900 people have already bought it, I'm also thinking they bought it. So they trusted it. So I can also trust it but 900 I've bought it stocks I have to buy it right now. Yeah.

2m 25s A third trick which we haven't talked about previously is called the decoy effect. Okay. It's a little involved so I'm going to explain it slowly. Let's start with the classic example. Okay. Wall Street Journal subscriptions. They had three deals on their website. Okay. Web only subscription for $59. Print only subscription for $125. Wow. Web plus print subscription for $125. Wait, the web only and web plus print was the same. Yes. Then why wouldn't I go for web plus print? Exactly. The middle one, print only subscription was a decoy put there just to make you think that the third one is like an excellent deal and that somebody there was being stupid enough and you have to take this deal right away before

3m 14s they find out about their mistake. And I fell for it. There are psychological experiments showing that lots of people fall for it, right? Pretty much if you remove the middle deal, then most people take the first one, the cheaper one. Yeah. $59. But as soon as you put the middle deal, most people take the third one. Okay. Just see how it shifted just by putting in that middle option, which then don't expect anyone to take anyways. Yeah. Because if you give me a printonly subscription for $125 and a print plus web subscription for $125, why would I go for the printonly thing or the web only thing? I will go for both of them at 125. But then I'm not

3m 54s paying in dollars. N I'm only paying in rupees. I don't buy dollar subscriptions. I don't I'm not that rich. This works even here, right? You go to a movie hall and you buy popcorn, right? And just look at the prices. Okay. Small 230, medium 240, large 250, and large is so much larger than the small, right? So you're like, okay, 20 more rupees and I get this huge thing. You buy this huge thing, right? Even though you don't eat that much popcorn at all. Well, actually, you do eat that much popcorn and then you feel very bad about yourself.

4m 26s No, you don't. I recently did this. I went for a movie at a theater and this this was the exact set of options in front of you. I'm like, "Huh, only 50 rupees more and I get this extra popcorn. Let's have it." And I bought two buckets of popcorn. Except I didn't know they were really buckets. And I didn't even end up finishing one/ird of it. It was a waste of food and a waste of money. But then the small was too expensive for it. Yeah. Exactly. The small was a decoy. Right.

4m 54s But and this is not just limited to these weird cases, right? Take a look. This is just yesterday. Amazon Prime subscription rates, right? Look at the monthly rate, look at the quarterly rate. And that is going to make you think, "Oh, the annual rate is so much cheaper because the quarterly rate is a decoy." Yeah. So, I look at the quarterly Prime subscription rates and I'm thinking if I pay for four quarters, I'm actually paying twice the amount of the annual subscription. So, I'll just buy the annual subscription. Whereas the fact is I don't even use Amazon Prime that much.

5m 24s It's just looking better by comparison. So, that's why I went for it. Yeah. And this is a basic human tendency, right? So that is why for example when somebody goes to a bar if they take a couple of their ugly friends along their chances go up much more because they look better in comparison. Right now I understand why my friends take me to bars and give me free whatever I want. Huh? Right. So you are the quarterly prime and they are the annual prime. Okay. Can we just move on from this please?

5m 54s Yes. Trick number four is anchoring. Okay. If you show people a very high price initially, right? Now it is like that is in their head. So then anything lower seems better in comparison. Right? Take a look at this example. Okay? This was rupees 1,000 but now you're getting it for $4.99. So you're thinking ah,000 rupee thing I'm getting in $4.99. That's so cheap. Whereas if the same thing was shown to you directly as $4.99, you would say hm that seems like a little too much, right?

6m 25s Yeah. And the 419 is also such a smart number because they are anchoring my brain to the four. Whereas the fact is it is just one rupee short of 500. So it's technically 500 rupees. Yeah. This also there are psychological studies showing that this actually works and more people end up buying when it is 499 versus uh the price is shown as 500. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing is that I have not seen a non-crossed out price in a long long time on any online platform.

6m 53s In fact, there is one smartwatch manufacturer who does this very regularly. They launch watches at 17,000 rupees with 90% discount. So, the actual watch is sold at 1,700 rupees. And they do this very regularly. If you have been checking out smart watches, you know which manufacturer I'm talking about. But this is another thing that they use. They anchor my price expectations to 17,000. So, 1,700 looks like like a brilliant deal. And then during these online sins, you know what they do? I recently found this out. What they do is a week before the sale they will increase the price of that product and during the sale they will decrease it just a little.

7m 29s So for a fact you are paying more than what you were paying a month earlier. So basically that crossed out price is not a real price at all and in fact this really low low price of $499 is actually a higher price. It is a higher price than what you would have paid maybe a month earlier when there was no sale going on on that product. So how would you know what was the price a month earlier? Oh, this is the secret part. This is the trick part. There is there are actually extensions available on the web that allow you to track price history of a product. So, you install that extension in your browser or you go

8m 02s to that website. Uh, and then you put in the name of the product and it shows you exactly how that product was priced ever since it came on the platform. So, one of the extensions I use is called Keepa Ka. We are not being paid for this. We are not their affiliates. We don't have an affiliate relationship with them, but it's a brilliant extension. If you install that, it shows you exactly how that product was priced ever since launch on that platform and Keepa works on Amazon. But there is something called pricehistory.in which is a website which works for multiple stores in India. So basic idea being that if it says oh 1,000 rupees you are getting at 499 you should just

8m 40s simply ignore the,000 rupees and you should also find out whether 499 is the actual price or a month ago it was at 400 or whatever right so use price history.in yes price history.in or Keepa or I believe there are a couple of others. I haven't really looked at them and that is something that I always do during any sale or anytime I want to purchase I check its price history and figure out whether it is at the right optimal price for me or not. So Shria it seems like you put in a lot of effort into this right? What are your other tricks?

9m 13s So I usually look for uh discount codes on the internet. If you search for any product and then type discount code, you usually end up getting some kind of a discount code which works or there are credit card discounts available on specific branded credit cards and these work. These definitely work to a large extent uh depending on whether you time it right. So some credit cards get more preference during some sales, other credit cards get preference during off sale season and stuff like that. So you just have to time it. When I was younger, I used to think that these tricks can't work, right? Seems just too easy that there is a discount code floating around. I thought the companies

9m 51s would shut it down, right? But they do work. Yeah. And uh I also thought about it for a long long time. I still haven't been able to figure out how is it that a company is willing to give a discount code when there is a certain price point that they have to sell at. Yeah. So we have covered this in an earlier episode about how product pricing is actually done. What the company is cleverly trying to do is sell the same product at two different prices. Right? The regular price there which you see is for rich people who don't care about the price so much. It doesn't make a big difference to them whether they buy at $4.99 or 3.99.

10m 30s Correct? Whereas there is a other section of the population who will not buy at $4.99 but they are willing to buy at 399. Yes, even the 399 is profitable for the company. Right? It's just that they only want the Shrians of the world to buy at 3.99. They want the Naven to buy at $4.99. Right? I am perfectly fine spending that extra bit of time looking for that 100 rupee discount code and buying it at 3.99. Navin is a rich man here. I am not and yeah and this absolutely makes sense for everybody involved because I will say you know what dollar value of my time right true it doesn't make sense for me to spend

11m 11s time looking for discount codes I'm happy to pay the 100 rupees extra but for someone else we are clearly implying here that shrian makes much less money but that is only for the purposes of illustration okay it's also the truth and also both of these are episodes that we have done we'll put links in the description. Go check them out. Very fun episodes and very enlightening episodes. Another thing that I used to think can't work is this. Oh, if you use so and so credit card, then you will get this nice big discount, right? And I used to worry that this just can't be true, right?

11m 45s There has to be some scam there. But I realized that especially in a place like India, that discount is simply coming from the marketing budget of either the credit card company or the brand. Right? what they are willing to give up a little bit of their profit. In return, what they're getting is a person who now uses credit cards more liberally, right? And that person is going to end up giving a lot of money to the credit card company over their lifetime, right? So, that is why it works. Unless you're one of those people who optimizes your credit card usage massively like one of those CC geeks, I believe they are called. uh in which case please do drop

12m 25s a comment and tell us some tricks of optimizing credit card usage that everybody who uses credit cards can do. No, you don't have to be a CC geek. Just simple rule to follow is just pay your credit card bill on time. Always always don't buy things that you can't pay for by the end of the month and you will be fine. Right. Yeah. And when he says when he says pay your bills on time, what he's actually saying is pay the full bill and not the minimum amount because the minimum amount is where the interest keeps getting added and you end up paying a lot more than what you actually paid for. But going back to what Mani said

13m 02s earlier in the episode, Navin sir, while shopping, we also know that this is a fake offer, but we still fall for it. Why do people still fall for these tricks despite knowing that they are tricks? So this is something we covered in our second episode ever, right? System one versus system two. Yeah. System two brain is the logical thinking brain which knows that a trick is being played on you. Except that system two brain is not the one taking the decisions. System one brain which has fallen emotionally in love with the discount and the product is the one making the decision. And then system two brain's job is to come up with some fancy reason why you want to buy it.

13m 42s Right? So the way to get around this problem, right, is what we had said in that episode also. Simple things to turn off your system one brain or at least sort of push it back, right? One is don't shop alone during sales. Have sit with a friend who doesn't have the same emotional reaction to those things who will tell you Sri Kant, you're being an idiot, right? Or just slow down. No quick decisions, right? Take your time. Let the system one brain settle down, get distracted by something else, then the system two brain makes the decision.

14m 19s The slow down part is very important because in a lot of these cases, uh the discounts are not the appeal. The thrill of the chase is the appeal for me. So slowing down is basically cutting the thrill of the cheese. Another thing to do is figure out your preferences and what you want, how much you're willing to pay before time. You still have some days before the big sales happen, right? Before you go and look at the prices and look at all the pretty pictures of the product and the people next to the product, write down what you want, how much you're willing to pay for it, and then use that as your true north, right? Don't get go into the

14m 58s flow, right? And see also there are some people who are strong system one thinkers, right? Who get emotional, who get carried away, you know? They're lovely people to be around, joyous, right? But what you want is the system two thinkers, right? Like the the the navens to the shrians is what you want. So every shrian needs to sit with the naven while you're making these big ticket purchases like buckets of popcorn. It was a mistake. I immediately regretted it. I still regret it. Yeah. And unless you're very rich, use discount coupons, promo codes, price tracking, etc. Those things actually work. And it's also a nice thrill of the chase to be in.

15m 39s But these are uh hopefully some tricks that you will employ in these upcoming sales and in all future uh sales. Do let us know if you snagged a deal uh by posting it in the comments because if it's a good deal, I might actually go for it as well. Uh if not find a Naven who can sit with you and uh tell you at the right moment in time Sri Kant you're being an idiot. Don't do that. This is Kant Naven Future IQ.