“Less is more” : En studie om hur knapphet påverkar köpbeteendet

Sammanfattning: Scarcity due to supply, demand or in time is all factors that affect consumers´ buying behavior. The scarcity principle describes how scarce resources appear more attractive to the customer's eyes than unlimited does. When something is scar the customer often draws parallels to the quality and price, that the product will be more expensive and better. People hate to be deprived of choices. When a certain product is scar, the customer will desire the product even more. If a product is sold only in "limited edition" for some time it seems that it is more attractive than if it were sold in the ordinary range. In this paper, we have gathered relevant theories to describe how different kinds of scarcity affect the customer's purchase process. We have chosen to only focus our study on buying behavior when it comes to fashion and clothing. This because we have found that few studies are conducted in this area. In theory scarcity has a significantly impact on customer buying behavior. What we are interested in investigate is how this works in practice. Therefore, we conducted qualitative interviews and an experiment in the actual buying situation and environment, to find out how customers were affected by the shortage dilemmas we inflicted on them. We found that our hypotheses about scarcity were partially true. The results show that the phenomenon works in practice. Examples of factors influencing purchase behavior when there were scarcity was; type of shop, sex and interest in the product.