Persuasion and Influence

Limited quantities available

This is an advert for Markisa Co., a company specializing in clothing and accessories. In white print at the bottom are the words ‘limited quantities available while stocks last’. This is an example of the scarcity principle in action. People assign the product more value because there is limited availability and people want more of what they cannot have. In this case, once the stock has finished for the day, people would lose the chance to acquire them and so this acts as a persuasion method to go and get these products on offer and particularly as soon as possible.

This is evidenced in a study where people had a selection of items in a simulated store and for both white wine and red wine options options they selected the very scarce items over the somewhat scarce and not scarce items, as shown below. (Parker & Lehmann, 2011).

References

Parker, J. R., & Lehmann, D. R. (2011). When shelf-based scarcity impacts consumer preferences. Journal of Retailing, 87(2), 142-155.