Real versus Fake Scarcity’s Influence Over Likelihood to Purchase: How Important is Limiting Supply When Marketing a Brand as Scarce?

Supreme is one of today's popular designer streetwear clothing brands. However, one of the largest differences between Supreme and other mainstream designer brands is that Supreme has only been around for just over 25 years. Within the past 10 years, Supreme's unconventional marketing techniques have helped the brand skyrocket to unprecedented success (Huddleston 2020). Part 1 of thispaper presents a case study examining the history and marketing tactics responsible for Supreme's growth. In Part 2, I developed an empirical study to analyze conspicuous consumers and their likelihood to purchase from a fictitious brand that, in one condition, marketed itself as scarce and limited its supply (Real Scarcity), or, in another condition, marketed itself as scarce and did not limit its supply (Fake Scarcity). I predicted that participants higher in conspicuousness would be less likely to purchase from a fictitious brand under the Fake Scarcity condition than the Real Scarcity condition, and that there would be no differences between the conditions for participants lower in conspicuousness. The results showed no differences between the conditions for neither of the conspicuousness level.