Last chance to enjoy this blog post before you close your browser! Don't Miss it!!!
Have you noticed how we tend to be drawn in by things that seem to be rare, in demand, and/or exclusive? Especially if the chance to experience them is going to be withdrawn within a short while?
Say hello to the Scarcity Principle.
The Scarcity Principle
"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."
- G. K. Chesterton
Scarcity Principle : Opportunities seem more valuable to us when their availability is limited. (ref : "Influence" by Robert Cialdini)
We are all familiar with this idea. We may not have articulated it to ourselves, but there is no doubt we have all felt the urge to go after something after hearing that it is now in short supply or is exclusive, even if we didn't really want it that much earlier.
And more proof comes from the fact that so many advertisements use it. It works.
New and Exclusive!!
Limited Offer!!
Offer valid till stocks last!!!
We have all seen the slogans. Why is it that we covet something that is "New"?
Observations
The first observation is that it is not going to be "New" for very long. It is going to be "New" only for a time of about a few weeks or months (depending on the product type). Which means that you'll only have a chance to buy that "New" product within a few weeks. After that, it will join the list of old products that were once new and are now being pushed off the shelves by the latest "New" product.
The same goes for "Limited Offer", etc. It's "Now or Never". If you don't buy it now, you'll never be able to buy it (with this particular offer).
As for "Exclusive", we've all seen how news channels overuse this term, flashing it numerous times everyday, sometimes for a story that is on every other news channel as well.
Auctions for rare collectibles are another prime example. How much of the bid is for the art and how much because it is rare?
So, there is no doubt that we respond to things whose availability is limited. And we can rest assured that this weakness is being exploited by all kinds of professionals who want to gain our compliance - pretty much con us, in other words.
Is it a bug or a feature?
Is it some trait that is useful to us in other circumstances and thus, worth having, despite the weaknesses that it gives us in the face of ads and other people trying to sell us stuff?
Or is it something that was useful to us in the past but is now obsolete?
Taking our behaviour to be that of a program, is this a desirable feature or an undesirable bug?
Reasons
In his eye-opening book Influence, Robert B. Cialdini mentions two possible sources for the scarcity principle being as powerful as it is.
One, in this modern age, humans are bombarded with way too much information on all sides. Even if you think you don't read too many newspapers or books or magazines, you're still overloaded with information in the form of the
- various technologies you have to deal with,
- laws, customs, and rules you have to comply with, and
- the choices you have to make in life, picking from a vast cornucopia of options.
Earlier, you didn't have to worry so much about choices (ranging from the trivial to the life-changing)
- which cellphone to buy,
- which apps to download,
- what hairstyle to have,
- which laptop,
- which OS,
- which browser,
- what sort of clothes to wear (traditional/modern/mixed, costly and classy/cheap but trendy),
- where to buy them from,
- what watch to wear,
- what sort of diet to take up,
- where you want to go to college (or how long you want to study for its entrance exam :) ),
- what sort of career you were going in for (high-responsibility high-pay high-stress/ low-responsibility low-respect chill-out / in between),
- where you might take up your job,
- whether to marry,
- when to marry,
- where to live after you marry (close to your parents', his/her parents', your workplace, his/her workplace, near some good schools for the children?),
- when and where to retire,
- whether or not to follow a religion,
- which sect of which religion to follow,
The list goes on. These many choices simply were not available to us in ancient times. People mostly had just one or two career options (hunting or gathering :) ), one or no religion, no marriage customs as such, pretty much fixed home town, no college, etc.
With our kind of information overload, it is all too easy to give up and stop functioning. It is to avoid buckling under the overload that we have a set of inherited or socially conditioned shortcuts. Instead of analyzing all the choices and all the information and coming to a reasoned choice, we just look at one or two features and come to a decision. We use heuristics, in other words.
Because we know that the things that are difficult to obtain or possess are often more valuable than things that are easy to possess, we use this single feature - the item's availability - to judge its quality. In this way, we are usually and efficiently right. In life, great jobs, great schools, loyal friends, hot girls, good actors, great writers, etc. are naturally scarce. No wonder they are in high demand.
In that way, the urge to go for is justified. However, sometimes the scarcity isn't all that natural.
Two, as opportunities become less available, we lose freedoms, and we *hate* to lose freedoms
Don't read any further. Stop. Stop right now!!! Don't go down the page.
For example, if we tell a person NOT to do a thing, he will usually end up doing that very thing. :)
Here's a Derren Brown video where he demonstrates with two superb examples Trick or Treat - Negative Suggestion (The video will play from 6m 24 s)
When something is Limited or Exclusive, our ability or freedom to use it is withdrawn, making us want to get it back. This explains the frenzy behind a lot of things, like various "Limited Edition" cars, cell phones, laptops, whatever.
It also explains why some boys and girls in the most repressive of societies would take the risk of falling in love and even eloping, against the threat of stoning, castration, or even death. Those societies may justify their repressive norms and harsh punishments by saying that they don't want such sins to be committed by anybody. However, they should realize that a major part of the temptation may come from the very taboo against such acts.
Similarly, there is a high associated with doing various things that are illegal, especially for youngsters. Teenagers are notorious for rebelling against adults' authority, sometimes going and doing things just to spite their parents.
Could this apply to "subversive" political ideologies too? Hmm... One of my professors once said that if we could mainstream these extremist fringe parties (think of any party that resorts to radical methods to be heard), they would find that they too are susceptible to all the problems they pointed out in the mainstream parties. They would find that it is only too easy to point fingers and ask hard questions. When the time would come for them to provide solutions, they might be just as much in discomfort as ruling parties. Worst of all, they might find that once the ban on them is lifted, the aura of being "a forbidden temptation" or a "banned and illegal outfit" they once had might be lifted as well and people may stop finding them as appealing or convincing as before.
One suspects that if the prohibition is removed, people might cool down and even feel slightly disgusted at the very thing they were in a frenzy about a few weeks earlier. Most teenagers become rather sober adults once all the bans are lifted and they are now free to do all those things they were itching to earlier. Most of them just move on to other things in life and even ignore outright all the erstwhile temptations.
Again, this is a necessary evil. We need to have the ability to rebel when our rights are taken away and our lives are stamped upon. It's just that sometimes this particular feature backfires on us.
Owning vs Experiencing
The most intriguing finding about Scarcity Principle mentioned in "Influence" is that the joy we get from owning a scarce good is not in experiencing it, but in possessing it.
This makes sense for collectibles where the "art" itself may not have much use for the owner, but he gets a big kick out of bragging to others (sometimes subtly, sometimes not quite so subtly). That alone may be worth the price paid.
This
means that in the case whene what we want from the item is the "social,
economic, or psychological benefits of possessing something rare, then
scarcity pressures will give us a good indication of how much we would
want to pay for it". The more scarce a diamond or ruby or whatever is,
the more we are likely to pay for it. That is because it will be more
valuable to us.
However, for stuff that we mainly want for its utility - music, drinks, cars, food, etc, stuff that we want to use, it is *vital* to remember that just because something is scarcer, doesn't mean it will feel or sound or ride or taste any better.
We have all been in situations where someone compliments us on some possession we have, thinking that we must be deriving a lot of joy from such a scarce resource as the one we have. However, we might feel that the thing we own doesn't contribute all that much towards our happiness when we use it.
So what now? What's the problem?
Now that we know about the power of the Scarcity Principle and the role it can play in influencing us to make irrational decisions, it is up to us to stay on the alert for places where people try to use it against us (and there are lots of such places).
After having read the book "Influence", I'm now doubly cautious when seeing any ad which has "New", "Exclusive", "Limited Edition", "Hurry!!", and/or "Don't Miss it!" anywhere in it. It is very likely that, because of the reactions that the Scarcity Principle induces inside me, I will make an ill-considered decision that I will regret later.
In all, let's stay on the alert and not fall prey to ads or salesman that try to use the Scarcity Principle against us in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment