The impact of scarcity on impulse buying behavior with social influencers

Social influencers have grown significantly in the online marketplace in the last decade. Past significant changes were made by technology, such as personal electronic devices and the internet, which boosted the online marketplace, and policymakers had to find ways to gain market traction in the online space. Another boost, the COVID-19 pandemic driver accelerated the mass adoption of online media, highlighting the significance of external factors that increase the new mass adoption wave of social influencers. Social influencers have attempted to optimize their use of current market tools and the prevailing environment to survive in the new competitive market. For social influencers, the use of scarcity, expressly limited quantity scarcity and limited time scarcity, have shown to be some of the most prominent tools in their arsenal to sway consumers into impulse buying behavior. The purpose is to understand the impact of scarcity on the impulse buying behavior of the consumer, recognizing the cognitive and affective effects, which will better aid in utilizing marketing strategies to gain consumers for social influencers. There is a problem in the social influencers’ understanding of which type of scarcity to combine with the type of their consumer’s cognitive or affective variable to achieve the most impactful impulse buying behavior response from their followers.