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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.

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.

This study aims to examine the relative effectiveness of demand-related and supply-related explanations of the scarcity of a product, and specifically the extent to which decision context and individual factors moderate purchase intention in response to those explanations.

The first of two formal experiments examines the effects of the two kinds of scarcity on participants ' purchase intentions with respect to utilitarian and hedonic product types. The second tests for self-monitoring differences in participants ' relative susceptibility to scenarios characterizing scarcity as either demand-generated or supply-generated, when their decisions are either private or subject to third-party scrutiny.

Experiment 1 shows that participants shopping for a utilitarian product are more inclined to respond positively to what they understand to be demand-generated scarcity, and less inclined to do so if the scarcity was attributed to limited supply; whereas the converse holds true for a hedonic product. Experiment 2 shows that for high self-monitors, increased purchase intention was the outcome of matching the alleged reason for scarcity to the demands of the decision context; low self-monitors were ready to consider demand-scarce products regardless of whether they knew that their consumption decisions would be subject to third-party scrutiny or private.

The paper identifies contextual and individual factors that explain and predict the extent to which one type of scarcity appeal may be more effective than another in influencing consumers ' purchasing decisions.

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.

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.

First, this paper aims to investigate the impact of impulsiveness on two types of shopping value (e.g. utilitarian and hedonic value) and the urge to buy restaurant products and services impulsively in social commerce environments. Second, the study assesses the impact of situational factors (e.g. scarcity and serendipity) on individuals’ shopping values.

Data were collected from 332 participants. By using PLS-graph 3.0, structural equation modeling was conducted. Furthermore, a hierarchical regression model was conducted for testing the mediating and moderating effects.

The results indicate that impulsiveness is a strong predictor for two types of shopping value (hedonic and utilitarian) and the urge to buy impulsively. While the hedonic shopping value was found to have a significant influence on the urge to buy impulsively, utilitarian value was not. Scarcity was moderator in the relationships between impulsiveness and both types of shopping value, whereas serendipity was found to moderate only the relationship between impulsiveness and the utilitarian shopping value.

The findings show that the marketing managers and application developers of social commerce should place their focus on scarcity and serendipity to stimulate consumers in having a hedonic shopping value so to have an urge to buy impulsively.

First, although most previous studies focused on only rational or planned consumption, this study focused on irrational and unplanned consumption as well. Second, the authors assessed the role of situational factors (scarcity and serendipity) occurring in social commerce and asserted that these factors moderate the relationship between consumers’ shopping values and their urge to buy impulsively.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how referral reward programs (RRPs) utilizing scarcity messages influence bank credit holders’ referrals to and adoptions by close or distant friends.

A 2×2 experiment is implemented with 760 consumers solicited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk worker panel. Logit transformation and general linear models are used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results showed that offering RRPs with limited available referrals (quantity scarcity) increases the overall number of referrals to and adoptions by close and distant friends. The percent of strong ties also increases with RRPs. As quantity scarcity is relaxed, the percentages of referrals to and adoptions by close friends decrease.

The inclusion of tie strength with scarcity framing greatly enhances our understanding of the effectiveness of RRPs for bank credit cards. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research attempt on this topic.

As a frequently observed business phenomenon, the use of product scarcity to improve a product’s market performance has received increasing attention from both academics and practitioners. The resulting literature has covered a wide variety of issues based on various theories, using different research methods, in a diverse range of settings. However, this diversity also makes it difficult to grasp the core themes and findings, and to see the outstanding knowledge gaps. This paper aims to review previous studies on the use of product scarcity in marketing and identifies new directions for future research.

A systematic review was conducted to identify and analyse 66 research papers published in business and management journals between 1970 and 2017.

The authors examined the underlying theories of scarcity-based marketing, and developed a conceptual framework that describes the key factors of product scarcity and how they influence both consumers and the market. They also highlighted some key achievements in modelling the processes involved in using product scarcity in marketing.

This analysis of the identified papers suggests that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of this field, which opens up new paths for future research. For future research, the authors identified three directions aimed at: addressing the practical needs of firms in understanding product scarcity; guiding the implementation of scarcity-based strategies; and measuring, monitoring and predicting the level of product scarcity and its impacts during implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of store messiness and human crowding on shoppers' competitive behaviours, in-store hoarding and in-store hiding, through the mediating effect of perceived scarcity and perceived competition.

2 (store messiness: messy × tidy) × 2 (human crowding: high × low) between-subject factorial experiment was conducted online to manipulate retail store atmospheric factors. A total of 154 responses were collected through Amazon MTurk. The hypotheses were analysed using ANOVA and PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) procedure.

Results suggest that store messiness and human crowding within a fast-fashion store lead to perception of scarcity and competition that further affects competitive behaviours. When consumers experience store messiness, they are likely to hide merchandise in store, thus making it inaccessible for other consumers. Further, when they experience human crowding in the store, they feel that the products will be gone immediately so they have a tendency to hoard them.

This study examined the effects of scarcity perception by studying the case of fast-fashion retailers; generalizability needs to be established across different contexts.

Retailers by manipulating human crowding and store messiness can create a perception of scarcity in their stores, thus enhancing sales. However, they should also pay attention to deviant behaviours such as in-store hoarding and in-store hiding as these behaviours may decrease the store sales.

This research contributed to the retailing literature by finding a significant relationship between human crowding, store messiness and competitive behaviours through perceived scarcity and competition.

Marketing practitioners consider packaging as a promising marketing tool, but current academic research covers mostly regular packages. Filling this gap, this paper aims to analyze why and how companies use limited edition packaging (LEP), which is defined as a scarcity product tactic, using the package exclusively to create a limited offer.

This study adopted a grounded theory methodology and used a qualitative collective case study design by analyzing 175 LEP launches in the beverage sector between 2000 and 2019.

The empirical-based conceptualization of LEP tactics provided here describes the crucial marketing dimensions in which strategic decisions are made regarding objective of release, implementation and related marketing mix decisions. Results show that LEP tactics serve parallel brands, sales and product strategy-related goals; LEPs are characterized by intensity, theme (occasion) and design characteristics, such as typicality, and marketers use various marketing mix combinations (i.e., pricing, distribution and advertising) in relation to the LEP offer.

To the best of author’s knowledge, it is the first conceptualization of this special type of scarcity tactic. This study also assists academics by providing an agenda for future research in this domain.