The Power of Scarcity: Leveraging Urgency and Demand to Influence Customer Decisions

241 Pages·2022·8.372 MB·English

by  Mindy Weinstein

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THE
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POWER
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OF
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SCARCITY
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THE 1
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POWER
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OF 5
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SCARCITY
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LEVERAGING URGENCY AND DEMAND
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TO INFLUENCE CUSTOMER DECISIONS
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MINDY WEINSTEIN, PhD
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NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO ATHENS LONDON
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MADRID MEXICO CITY MILAN NEW DELHI
SINGAPORE SYDNEY TORONTO 32
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Copyright © 2023 by Mindy Weinstein, PhD. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the
United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed
in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
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To my husband, Mike, and my two boys, Quentin and Bryson,
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who make me laugh and smile every day.
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Contents
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Introduction .................................................... ix
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PART ONE
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UNDERSTANDING SCARCITY
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CHAPTER 1 Scarcity as an Influence Factor ..........................3
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CHAPTER 2 You Can’t Have That!.......................................21 26
CHAPTER 3 Give Your Brain a Break ...................................41 27
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CHAPTER 4 FOMO: Why We’re More Afraid
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of Loss Than We Are of Gain ............................61
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CHAPTER 5 When Scarcity Doesn’t Work ............................77
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viii CONTENTS
1 PART TWO
2 USING SCARCITY
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CHAPTER 6 “Time Is Running Out!” ................................101
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CHAPTER 7 You Are Special ..............................................123
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7 CHAPTER 8 “Only While Supplies Last!” ..........................145
8 CHAPTER 9 Exclusive or Popular? ....................................163
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CHAPTER 10 Where Do We Go from Here? ........................181
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Scarcity Definitions at a Glance ......................187
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13 Notes .............................................................189
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Acknowledgments .........................................207
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Index .............................................................209
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Introduction
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It mIght sound melodramatIc to say that everything changed that day
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in 2017. It was another 110-degree day in Phoenix, literally hot
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enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. The heat didn’t get to me
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that morning, though, because I had a meeting with renowned
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social psychologist Robert Cialdini. Dr. Cialdini had graciously
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agreed to meet with me to discuss an academic topic, but our
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conversation became so much more. Over a cup of coffee, we
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discussed persuasion and its powerful psychological impact.
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We talked about the subtle ways wording a message can lead to
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greater influence. We even talked about FOMO (fear of missing
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out) and the havoc it wreaks on the mind.
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That one-hour conversation led me on a three-year journey
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into researching, experimenting with, and understanding scarcity.
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