What is Scarcity?
How this psychological principle can help grow your brand
Have you ever prepared for a weather (or pandemic-related) emergency by going to the grocery store? Have you noticed the first item to sell out is almost always toilet paper?
Toilet paper is a big, bulky, and universally used item. It’s easy to spot in someone’s basket, which makes buying it almost contagious. Let me explain…
Let’s say you walk into a grocery store and you start seeing people with carts piled to the top with toilet paper. Suddenly, other people in the store notice them, then look at the dwindling supplies on shelves and think to themselves, “I wasn’t planning on buying toilet paper, but if there isn’t enough I should make sure I grab some right now.”
Pretty soon, there are fistfights in the aisles over the last package of Charmin.
Why is that? Well, it’s down to an economic and psychological principle called Scarcity.
What is Scarcity?
This principle says that humans place a higher value on items that are hard to get our hands on — scarcity drives desire, a sense of urgency, and a fear of missing out.
Professor Robert Cialdini described scarcity this way:
“When our freedom to have…
