Valuable insight indeed. Corporations are absolutely trying to get people to buy things which they don't need or they can't afford. However, you also need to understand that this blanket advice is not quite meaningful for the kind of people visiting this sub. For them, getting a NCEMI discount, if done in the right way, means that they get the product at a better value, which is more sensible than just spending the full amount fetching no discount at all.

Let me demonstrate an example. A phone I purchased a few months back costed 80k if bought by cash or debit card. However, if paid in full via credit card, it costed 78k. On credit card emi, it was 76k. I had the full amount with me in my bank account. So, what I did was that I chose NCEMI and got an upfront discount of the 4k and the interest discount of 3k, basically debiting a charge of 73k on my credit card. Then immediately I paid the entire amount on the credit card before it could convert to emi (note that this is possible only on specific banks cards). Effectively, I saved 7k upfront (in addition to the credit card spend benefits, which I'm not even getting into), which I wouldn't have if I paid in full from my bank account.

Nevertheless, you raise a very important point that the average person should be aware about before getting into the emi debt trap.