Exploring the Influence of Perceived Scarcity on Consumer Purchase Intention

Book excerpt: With per capita income and private consumption rising year after year, consumers' desire for material possession escalates. When luxury fashion brand adopts scarcity strategy to incite purchase volume, consumers used to hesitate but now spur purchase willingness, awaiting psychological and substantial contentment upon limited products. Thus, forming on the S-E-D model, this study purports to fathom the impacts perceived scarcity (PS) on purchase intention (PI), mediated by consumers' psychology effect (CPE; uniqueness, conformity, vanity, novelty, conspicuousness) and perceived value (PV), also clarifying relations betwixt respective CPEs and PV. Collecting 600 valid online questionnaires, this study testifies hypotheses through structural equation modeling and substantiates: (a) PS significantly and positively affect CPE; (b) uniqueness and novelty psyche significantly and positively affect functional value; (c) vanity and conspicuousness psyche significantly and positively affect emotional value; (d) vanity and novelty psyche significantly and positively affect epistemic value; (e) conformity, vanity and conspicuousness psyche significantly and positively affect social value; (f) PV significantly and positively affect PI. Synthesizing findings, this study bestows theoretical implication for academics and researchers to further investigation, also provides managerial suggestion for Chanel scarcity strategy on handbags.