Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [109]
Scarcity
People often find objects and opportunities more attractive if they are rare, scarce, or hard to obtain. This is why you will see newspapers and radio ads filled with “Last Day,” “Limited Time Only,” “Only 3-Day Sale,” and “Going Out of Business Forever” messages that entice people to come from all over to get a share of the soon-to-be-never-seen-again product.
The use of scarcity in the sales context is best known with the catch phrase “Act now! Supplies are limited!” Other techniques are the common “The first X callers get a free widget,” or having an intentional short supply of a popular product. In recent times, this practice was most popularly alleged with the Nintendo Wii. Jason Dobson, a writer for Gamasutra, said, “But I think [Nintendo] intentionally dried up supply because they made their numbers for the year. The new year starts April 1, and I think we’re going to see supply flowing” (www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13297).
Where I live, a car dealership ran an ad on a Thursday stating it had to get rid of X number of cars due to new stock arriving. The prices were so low and some of the cars—wait for it—were no longer being produced, and that weekend was the last weekend ever that you could come in for a piece of auto-selling history.
The sales went through the roof that weekend, so the sale was over right? Nope, that ad ran every Thursday for more than three months. I often wondered how people just didn’t catch on to it, but the dealership sold a lot of cars using this method.
Social events can often appear to be more exclusive if scarcity is introduced. The perceived social benefit of attending these events often goes up in these circumstances. In advertising, this point is driven home with ads for music events that point out how the last concert was quickly sold out.
Many popular restaurants have been known to close off sections of the restaurant to appear busier than they really are. The perception that they are extremely popular can often trigger a heightened desire to eat at that establishment. To see an ad that actually mentions the use of scarcity in promoting an event, go to www.social-engineer.org/wiki/archives/Scarcity/Scarcity-Advertisment.html.
This ad played on four major components of scarcity:
The launch is limited access.
The application is not public and only limited.
Promoters are handpicked and limited.
The e-book is free to those lucky enough to be chosen to come.
All of these points use scarcity by making the would-be partygoers feel that getting into this event is so difficult that only the elite, the few, and the proud can even have a remote chance of stepping foot onto that hallowed ground.
The basics of economics are made up of the allocation of resources that have alternative uses. This allocation is driven by the scarcity of the objects that are being allocated. The rarer the resource, the higher the perceived value the object retains. This rarity is why gold is worth more than salt, which is worth more than clay.
Also, within daily interactions scarcity is often used. Scarcity can be introduced into social situations in an attempt to make something one has go up in value. For instance, one might act like he is very busy on a regular basis, and free time is hard to come by. This action may excuse him from not spending time with someone he may have an obligation to spend time with, and at the same time make time that is spent seem that much more valuable.
You can manipulate attention through the use of scarcity as well. Think of how many people complain about salesmen bothering them in a store when there is no scarcity of salespeople’s attention, yet they are just as upset when they are ignored by salespeople when their attention is scarce. On the whole, people are driven to desire that which is hard to obtain, because it is viewed as having more value. This holds true for attention as well.
Scarcity is often used in social engineering contexts to create a feeling of urgency in a decision-making