Crowds rarely gather by accident. 

They respond to incentives, emotion and information, often all at once. 

Srinagar witnessed that lesson when thousands of shoppers poured into Goni Khan after Surat Khazana announced deep discounts on women’s clothing. 

Streets clogged with traffic, police stepped in to control the rush, and videos of endless queues flooded Instagram Reels, WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages and local news feeds. 

Nearby shopkeepers pulled down their shutters in protest, arguing that one retailer’s aggressive pricing had drained customers from the surrounding market.

Many people saw only a shopping craze, but economists saw a case study unfolding in real time. 

That single retail promotion compressed decades of economic thinking into one crowded street, showing how pricing strategy, consumer psychology, competition and digital technology now feed one another with remarkable speed. 

Markets no longer move only through prices. Smartphones and social platforms have become powerful engines that amplify consumer decisions within hours.

William J. Baumol’s Sales Revenue Maximization Theory gives one of the clearest ways to understand what happened. 

Classical economics assumes firms seek the highest possible profit. Baumol challenged that assumption by arguing that many managers place greater emphasis on expanding sales while maintaining an acceptable level of profit. 

Higher sales volumes, wider market share, stronger brand recognition and lasting customer relationships often hold greater strategic value than extracting the largest margin from a single product.

Public information offers no window into Surat Khazana’s internal business strategy, so certainty would be misplaced. Still, Baumol’s framework helps explain why steep discounts often make commercial sense. 

Selling garments at unusually low prices can draw extraordinary customer volumes, introduce thousands of first-time buyers to a brand and build........

© Kashmir Observer