The Psychology of Scarcity

When used in the right way, scarcity is a tactic that drives sales. Scarcity means that there are not enough resources to meet everyone’s wants. From an everyday perspective as humans, we can acknowledge that we want what we cannot have. This is a yearning that all humans experience, on each side of the economic scale: wealthy, middle class, and poor. With this in mind, companies and salesmen can use the yearning to make sales. Advertisements like get in when you can or only a few remain, can trigger customer to be more eager to buy. Buyers have a fear of missing out. They may not be totally sure that they want a product, but they buy it anyway because they do not want to miss their opportunity to have it. Sales pitches like this are primarily successful because they give customers an emotional response rather than having them think more rationally. One initial thought I had when reading about scarcity as a sales tactic is that it could easily be used unethically. Suppliers could say they have a limited supply when they do not. As Christians, we should not use this tactic as a scam. This is unethical. Rather we should be totally honest about the amount of the product available. Also even when we are using scarcity, we should also be up front about the features and benefits of the product rather than just trying to induce FOMO. There are many real world examples of scarcity in sales. One is simply something like a holiday sale. The sale is scarce, the product is not, triggering an emotional response for customers to get the product while they can spend less money. Another example is a sale when a store is closing. Customers will want to buy the products while they are still available at all, and when they are cheap. Over all scarcity should be used sparingly but is a successful sales tactic.