The Effects of Perceived Scarcity and Anticipated Emotions on Purchase Intention (A Study on Social Commerce)

Marketers frequently create product uncertainty to generate consumers purchase intention. Of all marketing moves, scarcity tactics are commonly used by retailers, especially in fast fashion business, to escalate interest and intention to buy. Through a quantitative approach, this research seeks to provide an understanding of how consumers respond to scarcity environment strategically created by retailers and its effects on purchase intention. Data were collected from online and traditional surveys involving 100 women who have shopping experience through social commerce (e-commerce which uses social networking sites to facilitate social interaction between seller and buyer). Finding confirms that human-induced scarcity influences consumers purchase intentions by affecting emotional out-comes. When facing scarcity environment, consumers tend to anticipate some emotions that will further motivate purchase. The anticipated emotions motivating purchase are grouped into two categories, positive emotions of purchase (posAEp) and negative emotions of non-purchase (negAEnp). If consumers have assumptions that purchasing a desired product would generate positive emotions, like satisfaction, they would consider buying the product. On the other hand, their purchase intention increase for the reason that they want to avoid negative emotions as a consequence of missing the product. The emotions elicited by consumers after exposed to scarcity environment are proven to increase purchase intention. Thus, it is suggested that deliberately creating scarcity is able to enhance purchase intention. In addition to providing managers with useful insights into constructing a marketing strategy, from a methodological standpoint this reseach contributes to the consumer and retail literature by elaborating the correlation between perceived scarcity, anticipated emotions and purchase intention.