Sold-out prod­ucts cre­ate “infor­ma­tion cas­cades” where we infer that the next-best item must also be of a sim­i­lar high qual­ity and value for money: sold-out items ‘val­i­date’ sim­i­lar prod­ucts, per­suad­ing us to pur­chase more read­ily.

“Sold-out prod­ucts cre­ate a sense of imme­di­acy for cus­tomers; they feel that if one prod­uct is gone, the next item could also sell out. […] Research shows there’s also an infor­ma­tion cas­cade, where peo­ple infer that if a prod­uct is sold out, it must have been good and there­fore a sim­i­lar avail­able prod­uct will also be desirable.”

The study […] found 61 per cent of shop­pers would buy a par­tic­u­lar five-hour ski pass for $20, but that fig­ure rose to 91 per cent when they thought a 10-hour ski pass for the same moun­tain slope for $40 had sold out.

A sim­i­lar study of mer­lot wines found 49 per cent of con­sumers would buy a bot­tle if they had one choice, but when they thought a sim­i­lar wine had sold out next to it on the shelf, nearly twice the num­ber of shop­pers would take home the avail­able bottle.

The researchers note that for com­mon ‘stock’ items a sold-out sta­tus breeds con­tempt, whereas new and sold-out prod­ucts sig­nal an unan­tic­i­pated demand for a qual­ity product.

It goes with­out say­ing that the sold-out items didn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to exist, right?