Hi! My name is Clodagh, and I'm from Kildare. From 2012-2016, I compleated my undergraduate degree in Visual Communication and after a few years, I wanted to further my education and knowledge in User Experience Design, so over the past 2 years, I participated in the MSc in UX Design part-time in IADT while working as a UI/UX designer in a Dublin company. I love psychology, and I love shopping so why not marry both and create my final year research paper?
This research proposes that consumer behaviour of online mobile shoppers is affected by the perceived scarcity of a rare product by measuring consumer emotion and satisfaction during an online shopping experience. Scarcity is a persuasive design principle (Cialdini, 1993) applied in user experience design to motivate and influence a user to act. This is evidenced in relevant literature and design research that studies online shopping experiences and the differences between those experiences. There are many examples of online shopping applications that demonstrate scarcity in the buying experience such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Adidas and many other eCommerce applications. There are few who create experiences for users that apply scarcity to the experience of shopping for a product that is already scarce. Many reports study online shopping experiences but few examine the application of scarcity on a product that is actually rare. This research argues that the user experiences a heightened level of satisfaction.
There is a significant body of academic literature that looks at online shopping and the user behaviours surrounding scarcity within online shopping.
Three common themes were identified in the literature; online trust, navigation and consumer behaviour. This paper further examines how these factors influence a user’s experience. There is a further need to identify the effects of scarcity on the user experience of online shopping for rare products as prior research only explores the effect of scarcity in general online shopping, which may produce discordant results.