Scarcity in time as inconvenience: The role of dispositional reactance in product evaluation

Advertisements for products and services often contain a scarcity in time appeal to influence consumers. Previous findings indicate that a claim of time scarcity generally has a positive effect on consumers’ product evaluation. Participants comprised 100 undergraduate university students who were given a printout of a fictitious English-language website of a fashion retailer, in which we manipulated absent versus present scarcity in time. Results show that the positive effect of scarcity in time on product evaluation was moderated by dispositional reactance. Further, this moderating effect arose from the interpretation of scarcity in time as causing inconvenience. The results indicate that marketers benefit from scarcity in time advertising when consumers’ dispositional reactance is low.