Arousal or Not? The Effects of Scarcity Messages on Online Impulsive Purchase

With the proliferation of e-commerce, online promotion strategy of limited quantity and limited-time is widely used by online retailers to entice consumers’ purchases. However, few research has investigated the exact effects of such a promotion strategy on consumers’ online impulsive purchase. Based on the environmental psychology view, this study focuses on the mediating role of arousal in explaining the influences of scarcity messages in aspects of limited-quantity and limited-time on impulsive purchase. By building an online shop for an actual offline milk tea shop at taobao.com, an experiment with 182 participants was conducted to test our research model. The results provide strong evidence that both the limited-quantity and the limited-time scarcity messages positively influence consumers’ perceived arousal, leading ultimately to impulsive purchases. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.