Research Article
The Scarcity Message Effect in Discounted Product Sales
Published: January 2012 · Vol. 41 No. 6 · pp. 1591-1618
Full Text
Abstract
Companies most frequently use price discounts among sales promotion types, and such discount effects have a significant impact on consumer purchasing. Price discount formats include not only simple price discount events but also time-limited price discounts such as "today only special price" and "discount until this week only," as well as quantity-limited price discount events such as "discount limited to 100 people" and "limited to 30 units." From this perspective, this study examined the scarcity message effect in the sale of price-discounted products. First, the study compared cases where scarcity messages (time-limited and quantity-limited) were presented during price discount events with cases of simple discounts. Additionally, the differences between time-limited discounts and quantity-limited discounts were compared. The results showed that purchase intention was higher when scarcity messages were presented compared to simple price discounts, and purchase intention was higher for quantity-limited discounts than for time-limited discounts. The moderating effects of brand power and uncertainty avoidance tendency were examined for price discounts with scarcity messages. For time-limited price discounts, the moderating effect of brand power was examined and found to be significant, and for quantity-limited price discounts, the moderating effect of uncertainty avoidance tendency was examined and found to be significant. Finally, when price discounts ended and products were sold again at regular prices, the negative effects of price discounts were found to be smaller when scarcity messages had been presented than in cases of simple price discounts.
