Cookie Jars and the Scarcity Mindset ...How They Produce a Sales Frenzy

It's called "The Scarcity Mindset". As unusual as it may at first seem, it works. The more "unattainable" you make your product or service, the greater the desire is for people to buy from you.

Here are some examples that illustrate this "positioning strategy":

Example 1- Cookies

Many years ago a marketing study was performed involving two jars of cookies.

Two cookie jars were placed at opposite sides of a room. One cookie jar had three cookies in it. The other was filled to the brim with over 20 cookies.

The cookies in each jar were the same. The demonstrator told a story of how tasty and delicious both lots of cookies were and asked everyone to grab a cookie.

90% of people moved towards the cookie jar with the least number of cookies in it because they perceived that they must have been the most popular because the cookie jar was nearly empty.

Example 2 - Cosmetics

I have a colleague who is one of Australia's mail order cosmetic kings. He writes his own ads and in the "call to action" at the end he puts ...

"Strictly limited to 2 per customer only." This simple statement makes a consumer believe that there is a limited supply and that it is a highly valuable commodity, so they buy.

And, they don't buy just one, they often buy two.

Example 3 - Department Store

There's a major department store in Australia called "David Jones". They bill themselves as the most Department Store in the world. Whether or not this statement is actually true, they are a great example of the art of positioning.

Their display windows are simply stunning. You walk in and are overcome by a sense of elegance. The feeling you get is that the goods are going to be very expensive.

You walk up to a product that you've seen elsewhere in a comparable department store and look at the price and you're very pleasantly surprised. It's the same price as at the other store so they think they're getting a bargain.

Example 4 - Consulting Firm

Then there's a masterful strategy that one of my clients in the consulting profession implemented. Their firm focused on consulting to other professional service firms. They found that there was a certain type of client that they had the most success with and were the most pleasurable to deal with.

Given that, they decided to have a qualification or client selection process in that potential clients needed to qualify before they became a client. They needed to meet a dozen or so criterion based on the attitudes of partners, firm profitability and size and marketing focus.

The result was that they were inundated with firms who wanted to qualify or mould their practices so they did qualify.

Example 5 - Dentist

By now, everyone has probably heard the story of Paddi Lund, a dentist here in Brisbane. He has built his practice up on referrals. In fact, you can only get into his surgery if you're referred by another patient (or guest).

As you can see, there's merit in the madness. This "scarcity" mindset can work to your advantage if applied correctly. Having said that, if you want to adopt it into your marketing efforts it's vitally important that you don't simply pay "lip service" to it. What I mean is that the "scarcity" that you are promoting must be genuine. In other words, you must genuinely have a qualification process that rejects xx% of prospective clients.