Psychology of Persuasion: "Only a few items left!" (Consumer Psychology; Part 1)

Hello and welcome back to the world of psychology. Sorry, sold out. You are not allowed to buy that. It's restricted. Reactance theory in consumer psychology. On the one hand, consumers' reactance is one of the biggest problems for marketing experts. Whenever they try to convince a consumer with a slogan or advertising message, they have to fear that the consumer shows reactance. Because reactance tends to occur when we have the feeling that our freedom gets threatened. And if somebody tells us, well, you should buy exactly this product. Well, no, I will buy whatever product I choose to buy. And for that reason, marketing experts put a lot of effort in creating advertisements, which don't come along as persuasive attempts. There's a lot of humor, maybe some sexual tension, or maybe a prominent musician, which we really enjoy to listen to. And as a consequence, the advertisement is no longer perceived as an obvious, persuasive attempt. It's more like entertainment. And another form of bypassing reactance, of course, is product placement, at least as long as we don't realize it. But on the other hand, and that's the tricky part, reactance is not only a problem for marketers, it can also be used by them against us. Many marketing experts know very well how to use our tendency to show reactance when our freedom is under threat. And one way how it's used is pretended scarcity. You probably know the situation. You may be shopping on Amazon, and you're thinking about buying a product, but you're not yet absolutely sure. But then you see, whoa, there are only two left in store. Ooh, I better buy now. And maybe you really decide to buy. And you were really lucky, because some minutes later, another guy bought the last product. And now you think, well, whoa, that was close. But again, some minutes later, what do you read on the same web page? Well, now there are just eight more items left. So obviously, it's a great marketing strategy. And if it wouldn't work, they wouldn't mention it on almost every product page. And that it really works, and under which circumstances scarcity, pretended scarcity, can have a huge impact on consumers, was already shown in a classical study by Warfel, Lee, and Ederwohl in the year 1975. The title of the study was Effect of Supply and Demand on Rating of Object Value. The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. All in all, 146 students took part in the study. And those students were told a cover story. They were told, well, it's a consumer study, and we want you to evaluate different products. And the products were buttermints, cigars, and cookies. But in fact, the main focus was on the cookies. There were different experimental conditions. Some participants were given only two cookies on a plate, and other participants got much more cookies. They got 10 cookies. But in some experimental groups, the participants were not allowed to keep the 10 cookies. Because after a short time, a second experimenter entered the room and said, sorry, but my group of participants ate much more cookies than I expected. So is it okay if I take some cookies away? And all of a sudden, the participants who originally had 10 cookies, now only had two cookies. In another experimental condition, the second experimenter also entered the room and said, sorry, I have to exchange your plate with cookies. It was a mistake for me. Sorry about that. So in this condition, the reason for taking away a big number of cookies was an accident. And in a third condition, the second experimenter also entered the room, but this time, the participants were allowed to keep the 10 cookies. After a while, the participants were asked to rate the cookies. They were asked to write down their liking on a scale from one to nine. And they were also asked how much they thought the cookies would cost. And that's very interesting, because it turned out that when they were taken away cookies because of high demand, because supposed other participants had eaten so many cookies, they said, well, yeah, I think these cookies are quite expensive. Of course, this is not only an effect of reactants, it's also an effect of social proof. Well, if all the other people say it's good, then it's probably good and worthy. Interestingly, the effect was not that big when the cookies were taken away because of a mistake of the experimenter. And the estimated price was even lower when the participants were not taking away any cookies at all. So this study shows a important aspect in respect to reactants, because it tells us reactants can be especially strong if our freedom is threatened by other people. It's not that strong if we are told, well, sorry, the scarcity is a result of an accident. And the study highlights another important aspect, because as I said, there was also a group that received only two cookies right from the start. And in this group, the cookies were not appreciated more. The participants did not say, well, these cookies are probably very expensive, because they thought, well, two cookies, that's just normal. They didn't experience that they could also have more cookies. So reactants only occur when we really expect to have a choice, if we know that there are other alternatives. So if there was just one petrol station in the world that continually raises prices, well, there's not much you can do about it. But if you know on the other side of the city, there's another petrol station and they are much cheaper, then this would cause much more reactants.