Online retail giants accused of price manipulation

E-commerce companies such as Flipkart, Amazon, Shopclues and Snapdeal, among others, are allegedly resorting to price manipulation to boost sales and increase profit margins, say industry experts in India. Offering discounts still remain the crucial factor to push sales online. This especially true in a scenario in which ‘data crawling’ (e.g. a process conducted by apps that compare the best deals across different platforms) has made discounting mandatory to attract traffic. In the begging, e-commerce platforms used to cover discounts from their revenues; they are now squeezing them from the sellers.