Scarcity principle
The scarcity principle ( English Scarcity-effect is) one by psychologist Stephen Worchel -studied phenomenon of reactance compensates and with the shortage of goods related. According to the scarcity principle, people show a preference for quantitatively limited goods, regardless of their product quality . This can be explained by the fact that a low offer is associated with exclusivity or high quality.
experiment
In 1975, Stephen Worchel, in an experiment disguised as a consumer study, examined the preference for different cookies , with one group of the test subjects receiving a whole box of cookies, the other only two cookies. It was found that precisely these few cookies were the most popular and most frequently chosen by the test subjects.
marketing
Companies around the world use the scarcity principle as a marketing instrument in the context of artificial scarcity in order to secure the exclusivity of a product or a brand . For this purpose, the quantity produced - if there is a demand - is deliberately set too low and the possible income from the quantities not produced is waived. This strategy is primarily pursued by manufacturers of luxury goods (such as the It-Bags from Louis Vuitton , Hermès or Chanel ) by establishing the inaccessibility of a product through waiting time and high-price strategy as two properties inherent in a luxury brand.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stephen Worchel / Jerry Lee / Akanbi Adewole, Effects of Supply and Demand on Ratings of Object Value , in: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 32/5, 1975, pp. 906-914
- ↑ Gesa Prüne, Luxury and Sustainability , 2013, p. 177