Psychology: The Art and Science of Persuasion

Marketing activities are the aptest way to communicate with the customers the products and services a company offers and fulfill their demands. It is a way of contacting consumers by reading their minds about how they want their desired products to be; for that, customer satisfaction remains a priority (Babu, 2014). This paper explores one of the six fundamental principles of Cialdini and displays three relevant advertisements. Also, the connection of social psychological principles with the selected principle will be discussed with examples and evidence from scholarly sources.

One Of The Six Cialdinis Principles and Three Ads Illustrating It

Cialdinis taxonomy identifies the six fundamental principles: reciprocity, scarcity, authority, social proof (consensus), liking, and commitment (Alslaity & Tran, 2021). The second principle, scarcity, is a unique way of marketing products to consumers in a way that intends to increase the desirability and value of the marketed product (Barton et al., 2022). It is done to shape the consumer purchase intention and buying behavior towards a particular item so that motivation for buying before the product runs out of stock transform into an urgency or sometimes fear of losing it.

Below are three examples of advertisements that made use of scarcity:

Countdown timer to create urgency

The Body Shop used a countdown timer to create a FOMO (fear of missing out) effect in their email marketing (Kristensen, 2022). Mostly, it has been observed that timers are placed at the beginning of the email newsletter to grab the attention instantly; however, The Body Shop has used the tactic in an entirely different manner. The email ad displays that the countdown timer for the offer is placed at the end of the newsletter, far below the all-caps heading of the copywriting ad and details of the advertisement. Again, a valuable tactic used by the company with striking use of colors for attention-grabbing despite being at the end.

A message like 3 left in stock.

Placing a call-to-action (CTA) button just beside 3 left in stock creates a straight urgency for the customer to pick a shirt while it stays in stock (Ugmonk, n.d.). Ugmonk is a high-quality minimalistic and skilled aesthetic clothing brand offering tee shirts, hats, leather goods, etc. When its website is opened, and one product is clicked on the tee shirt section, right below the CTA button, the items left in stock are mentioned to create a scarcity effect. It persuades the target customer to buy after creating a strong appeal and motivation for the product they have been looking for or wanting for a long time.

Scarcity tactic through Todays deals

Amazon effectively uses todays deals to create an urgency to buy a certain product on a particular day (Luxem, 2020). Those deals on specific products are not present the next day, which determines an attractive strategy for the consumers. For example, in the ad below, a person thinking of buying NeoGen cream would certainly opt for the daily deal with a discount and might go for 2 items rather than one on any other day.

The above three advertisements depict three different tactics marketers have used for their respective brands to attract customers. It is not always necessary to attract through discounts. When a product sells fast, the company might not need a discount as it would already be making profits. However, todays marketing has moved beyond that principle since its target generation has changed. The recent generations, particularly Generation Z, are still under investigation by marketers with unique market needs and buying habits. The scarcity principle has to be molded to attract them in new ways and play around with the traditional consumer psychology phenomenon to generate desirability and products with limited item availability.

Scarcity, uniqueness, and exclusivity are three interrelated phenomena used to instigate a desire among the new generations consumers to give a high value to the brand (Dobre et al., 2021). For example, the idea has been taken from our ancestral approach when they could sense signs if water or food were about to go scarce. Marketers still utilize the rarity feature. Hence, an urgency is created, especially by luxury brands, that the consumers think are special and should be used exclusively by them only (Dobre et al., 2021). When they see Hurry, 1 left in stock, their brain sends them a message to click on the button before the time runs out. Taking advantage of the limited-time offers and forecasting that the product will not be available tomorrow if the last one is in stock is a method of creating differentiation for the consumer. The rarity effect subtly signals uniqueness that digital customers of todays generation...

…join social groups and decide after gaining information online in similar ways. Creating scarcity with peer influence could be a useful tactic as electronic word of mouth (eWOM) would help link online content with demand fulfillment criteria for the target consumers (Armagan & Cetin, 2013). Also, the urgency and exclusivity would be shared among the peers to make it more reliable for the potential consumer as peer opinion would matter for him to reach his final buying decision.

On the other hand, facts and statistics give power to the marketing copy and add to the value of persuasion, which is used as a statistical appeal in marketing and advertising. The research was conducted to determine whether narrative health data had more influence on the population than statistical data (Lin & Lee, 2020). The results signified that statistical data created a higher impact on the minds as they were more persuasive, offering a true picture for the consumer for health claims and consumption of food products. The same is used in marketing other products in contemporary times where readily information on the Internet has increased the demand for accurate information for the consumer. They also cross-check on social media and other pertinent platforms.

Two ethical issues regarding the scarcity principle are not to repeat scarcity frequently on the same products or for several products incessantly and to avoid presenting wrong scarcity levels, which could make the consumers perceive the company badly (Ron, 2017). Damage to the companys reputation would be irreversible damage.

The same stands true for alternate techniques in the persuasion plan. The statistics must be true and fair to create a bond of trust with the customers. As mentioned earlier, online users tend to search and verify information online from several sources; hence, the information must be ethically accurate (Atchison, 2019).

In my professional life, I can teach this learning effectively by keeping in mind consumer psychology and how their cognitive processing could be capitalized on. The copywriting techniques are based on these phenomena rooted deep in the human psyche. Understanding this would give me an insight into how scarcity and advertising go hand in hand. Also, digging deeper into human psychology and studying the trends of recent generations would be useful knowledge that could be aligned with recent ethical guidelines for marketing and advertising. Modern consumers are highly…