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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how referral reward programs (RRPs) with scarcity messages influence consumer’ recommendation behavioral intentions about a bank credit card.

In total, 1,599 consumers are accessed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk worker panel. The authors use general linear models, analysis of variance and analysis of covariance to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that offering RRPs with scarcity messages increases a consumer’s behavioral intentions to recommend. The limited-quantity message in RRPs has the highest positive impact on consumers’ behavioral intentions.

No prior studies have addressed the relationship between referral rewards and scarcity messages in the bank credit card context. The study contributes to the understanding of the effectiveness of RRPs with scarcity message in improving consumer’s referral.

The current research explored both pre-purchase and post-purchase factors of consumer behaviour. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships that may exist among consumers’ perceptions of perishability, scarcity, low price, attitudes, impulse buying, post-purchase emotions, and product returns within the context of the fast fashion environments.

A total of 246 usable questionnaires completed by female undergraduate students, who made purchases and product returns at fast fashion retailers, were analysed in SPSS and AMOS 23.0. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypotheses.

Consumers who are attracted to scarcity due to limited supply and scarcity due to time, referred to as perceived perishability, have a positive attitude towards the fast fashion retailers in which products are presented in scarce environments. Likewise, consumers have a positive attitude towards fast fashion retailers due to low priced merchandises they offer. Consequently, consumers who have a positive attitude towards the fast fashion retailers are likely to purchase products from them impulsively. Moreover, impulse buying behaviour positively influenced some negative post-purchase emotional responses, which in turn positively influenced product returns in the fast fashion environments.

The results of the current study contribute to a greater understanding of apparel-related consumer behaviour in general. A theory formation of fast fashion consumer behaviour from acquisition to disposal can be drawn from the results of this study. Because some fast fashion retailers do sell clothing for both men and women, researchers could compare the responses of males and females to examine differences in consumer behaviour related to demographic characteristics. In the future, an examination of actual emotional responses and return behaviour would be beneficial for a more complete understanding of post-purchase consumer behaviour.

Fast fashion retailers could use this information to carefully design shopping environments that induce impulse buying behaviour because it may result in product returns. Fast fashion retailers need to understand the causes of the return behaviour, whether consumer related or product related, to better meet the needs of their target market. Return policies must be considered.

This research is the first to examine the impact of negative emotions following consumers’ impulse buying on product returns in the fast fashion retail environments.

This paper aims to examine whether the disclosure obligations in areas of water stress required under the revised Global Reporting Initiative standard (GRI) 303 Water and Effluents, 2018 will improve the quality of corporate water reporting. As a key new requirement is to disclose the impact of water withdrawals from (and discharges to) areas experiencing water stress, the authors examine the ambiguity of the term “water stress” and the extent to which following the GRI’s guidance to use the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and/or the Water Risk Filter will enable quality corporate water reporting.

The study is informed by the notion of public interest reporting, on the basis that the provision of contextual water information is in the public interest. To explore the ambiguity of the term “water stress”, the authors conduct a semi-systematic review of hydrology literature on water stress and water stress indices. To explore the efficacy of using the Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and/or the Water Risk Filter, the authors review the operation and underlying data sources of both databases.

The term “water stress” has a range of definitions and the indicators of water stress encompass a wide variety of differing factors. The Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas and the Water Risk Filter use a combination of different risk indicators and are based on source data of varying quality and granularity. Further, different weightings of water risk information are available to the user, which yield different evaluations of water stress. A variety of approaches are permitted under GRI 303.

Effective implementation of GRI 303 may be impeded by the ambiguity of the term “water stress”, varying quality and availability of the water stress information and the fact that different water stress calculation options are offered by the water databases. The authors suggest that the GRI closely monitor compliance, implementation approaches and scientific developments in relation to the water stress requirements with a view to providing further guidance and improving future iterations of the standard.

Whilst there have been many calls for improved contextual water reporting, few previous studies have explored the challenges to implementing reporting requirements related to the determination of “water stress”.

The purpose of this paper is to study the interaction of timing cues (active deals vs upcoming deals) and brand familiarity on consumers’ purchase intention.

The research design of this paper is based on one experiment conducted in a behavioural experimental laboratory and two experiments in Mechanical Turk. The data received from these experiments were analysed using one-way ANOVA technique and PROCESS models.

Results across three experiments show that consumers prefer upcoming deals over active deals when brands are of low familiarity. However, the effect is attenuated for brands with high familiarity. Further, the paper proposes and shows that the effects of timing cues and brand familiarity interactions on purchase intention are explained by temporal distance. Finally, results show that need for cognition moderates the effects.

The research results may vary when size of discounts is mentioned. There is a need to study various other moderators such as product type, self-other overlap and regulatory focus.

The paper offers managerial strategies and insights that can be adopted by the online retailing industry. Paper offers practical implications for brands, especially for ones with low familiarity.

This paper adds to the literature by studying new timing cues to understand the behaviour of consumers in retailing industries.

A common tactic employed by retailers to enhance shoppers' purchase intentions is to promote a special offer product for purchase only at certain selected stores. This research aimed to identify the specific processes by which restricting the outlets drives intention to buy.

Three between-subjects experiments examined the effect on purchasing intention of outlet selectivity, as mediated by participants' perceptions of temporal accessibility and geographic accessibility (study 1), and investigated the extent to which decisions to buy might be moderated by the limited number of stores where the item would be available (study 2) and by “limited market,” in which the right to buy a product is restricted to a limited set of consumers (study 3).

The study findings are that joint consideration of the perceived temporal and geographic accessibility of a product generates two possible ways in which availability limited to certain stores makes the product seem hard to get and motivates consumer purchase decisions. However, such effect is confined to conditions in which the distribution of those outlets is low-density. When there was no change in those scores if restrictions were lower, participants' responsiveness to decreased availability was significantly raised by announcing that the chance to buy the product is further limited to “eligible” customers.

This research focused on consumer responses to outlet selectivity, a branch of inquiry that treats an overlooked facet of limited availability and provides useful assistance for developing methods to stimulate consumers' desire to purchase.

This study aims to examine whether adding a quantity scarcity message to a monetary discount helps to improve consumers’ offer-related perceptions and intentions, and how the effectiveness of that message compares with adding time restriction to the offer.

Two experiments, where participants evaluated retail ads and responded to relevant measures, were conducted in two country markets.

Adding either a quantity scarcity message or time restriction to a monetary discount increases the potency of a retail offer. Further, when an offer ad emphasizes product and price-related cues in a balanced manner, time restriction results in more favorable consumer perceptions than scarcity. However, this difference in the messages’ efficacy disappears when the offer strongly emphasizes price-related cues.

The US market sample is more homogeneous than the Indian one. Discounts were presented in terms of advertised reference prices; further research with other discount formats is desirable.

Understanding the relative efficacy of quantity scarcity message and time restriction in discounted retail offers can give managers flexibility in the use of these tools.

This paper addresses scholars’ call for theory-grounded research that provides guidance to retailers on the use of sales promotional tools.

Marketers make an effort to affect consumers through scarcity marketing thus shaping the perception of scarcity and creating desirability for consumers. To expand the scarcity-expensiveness-desirability model and to enhance insights for practical applications, this study modifies the causal relationship among two types of scarcity, three types of expansiveness and desirability.

This study surveyed 400 Taipei city residents who had purchase experience with luxury brands products in Taiwan. The study employed structural equation modeling as empirical analysis.

The empirical results show that limited-quantity scarcity main influences perceived social status and then affects desirability. The second path is that limited-quantity scarcity influences perceived uniqueness and then affects desirability. Therefore, perceived social status and perceived uniqueness dominate the majority of effects on desirability because they are the recognition of the individual compared to others, especially when applied to luxury goods.

Because limited-quantity scarcity has a greater impact on desirability than limited-time scarcity in the empirical results, marketers can adopt limited-quantity scarcity messages that are better than limited-time scarcity, to increase consumers’ desire to purchase luxury goods.

The first novelty of this study is dividing scarcity marketing into limited-quantity and limited-time scarcity in the scarcity-expensiveness-desirability model. This study extends expensiveness in the scarcity-expensiveness-desirability model with a complete demonstration, that is, perceived social status, perceived uniqueness and perceived value, which is the second novelty of this study.

This paper aims to examine how the temporal distance can influence the effect of the scarcity message. To demonstrate this effect, the authors use the limited-quantity flash sales and compare two types of mixed promotion method comprising discount rate and limited quantity.

The results of the experiment reveal that consumers in the temporally distant condition have a relatively high-level construal of the limited-quantity flash sales and are more likely to value desirability (discount rate) over feasibility (limited quantity).

When the expected value is identical, consumers prefer limited-quantity flash sales with smaller limited quantity but higher discount rates. However, consumers in the temporally near condition have a relatively low-level construal of the limited-quantity flash sales and are more likely to value feasibility (limited quantity) over desirability (discount rate).

When the expected value is identical, consumers prefer limited-quantity flash sales with lower discount rates but larger limited quantity.