Can Stock-Outs Act as Scarcity Cues? Impact of Scarcity Message Types and Their Disclosure Time on Number of Items Bought in an Online Fashion Setting

Fashion is one of the most popular retail categories (PwC 2016), and has enjoyed a high growth rate in the recent years, especially in the online channel (PwC 2016). The (online) fashion sector is characterized by: fast offer turnaround, a big number of unique SKUs having to account for multiple colors and sizes, as well as demand uncertainty due to dynamically changing fashion trends. Because of these characteristics, consumers are often confronted with huge variations in assortment and tend to regularly face stock-outs or messages suggesting there are only a few items left of certain SKUs. Massive differences in items’ stock levels are indeed reported to be one of the key issues in the sector (e.g. Contalog 2016).