Scarcity tactics in marketing: A meta-analysis of product scarcity effects on consumer purchase intentions
Barton, Zlatevska and Oppewal meta-analyse the effect of product scarcity cues on consumer purchase intentions, motivated by the fragmented state of a literature in which retailers deploy many kinds of scarcity cue across many settings without any cohesive estimate of how large the effect is or how it varies. Pooling 416 effect sizes from 131 studies, they report that cues signalling the current or potential unavailability of a product generally enhance its value and desirability and in turn increase purchase intentions. The moderator they report is the one that matters: demand-based scarcity is the most effective form. That matches the finding Worchel and colleagues reported in 1975 by entirely different means. This publication notes that purchase intention, and not purchase, is the outcome measured across most of this literature.
Barton, Zlatevska and Oppewal meta-analyse the effect of product scarcity cues on consumer purchase intentions, motivated by the fragmented state of a literature in which retailers deploy many kinds of scarcity cue across many settings without any cohesive estimate of how large the effect is or how it varies. Pooling 416 effect sizes from 131 studies, they report that cues signalling the current or potential unavailability of a product generally enhance its value and desirability and in turn increase purchase intentions. The moderator they report is the one that matters: demand-based scarcity is the most effective form. That matches the finding Worchel and colleagues reported in 1975 by entirely different means. This publication notes that purchase intention, and not purchase, is the outcome measured across most of this literature.
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Barton, B., Zlatevska, N., & Oppewal, H. (2022). 'Scarcity tactics in marketing: a meta-analysis of product scarcity effects on consumer purchase intentions.' Journal of Retailing, 98(4), 741-758. Meta-analysis of 416 effect sizes from 131 studies; cues signalling current or potential unavailability generally enhance value and desirability and increase purchase intentions, with the effective cue depending on product type: demand-based for utilitarian products, supply-based for experiences, time-based for high-involvement products. doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2022.06.003
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2022.06.003
DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2022.06.003