IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v89y2026ipas0969698925003467.html

The scarcer, the more eager to buy? How does the scarcity of blind box products affect impulse purchase intention

Author

Listed:
  • Tang, Xiaoli
  • Zhang, Yi

Abstract

As an emerging consumption model, blind boxes are characterized by a distinct form of product scarcity in their sales. This study examines the blind box consumption scenario to explore how product scarcity (supply scarcity vs. demand scarcity) influences consumers' impulse buying intentions. Drawing on commodity theory, accessibility-diagnosability theory, and regulatory focus theory, the research is conducted through three experiments. Study 1 identifies the main effect, revealing that product scarcity positively impacts impulse buying intentions, with supply scarcity having a significantly stronger influence than demand scarcity. Study 2 uncovers the mediating mechanism, demonstrating that accessibility-diagnosability fully mediates the relationship between product scarcity and impulse buying intentions. Study 3 investigates the moderating effect, showing that regulatory focus moderates both the impact of product scarcity on impulse buying intentions and the mediating role of accessibility-diagnosability. Specifically, stronger impulse buying intentions are observed under a preventive focus in demand scarcity and a promotional focus in supply scarcity. The findings contribute to the application of scarcity theory in experiential products and offer valuable theoretical insights and practical recommendations for blind box enterprises in developing targeted marketing strategies and industry standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Tang, Xiaoli & Zhang, Yi, 2026. "The scarcer, the more eager to buy? How does the scarcity of blind box products affect impulse purchase intention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:89:y:2026:i:pa:s0969698925003467
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104567
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698925003467
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104567?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barton, Belinda & Zlatevska, Natalina & Oppewal, Harmen, 2022. "Scarcity tactics in marketing: A meta-analysis of product scarcity effects on consumer purchase intentions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(4), pages 741-758.
    2. Yuen, Kum Fai & Tan, Lydia Sonia & Wong, Yiik Diew & Wang, Xueqin, 2022. "Social determinants of panic buying behaviour amidst COVID-19 pandemic: The role of perceived scarcity and anticipated regret," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    3. Tandon, Anushree & Dhir, Amandeep & Talwar, Shalini & Kaur, Puneet & Mäntymäki, Matti, 2022. "Social media induced fear of missing out (FoMO) and phubbing: Behavioural, relational and psychological outcomes," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    4. Pandey, Shweta & Mittal, Sheetal & Chawla, Deepak, 2024. "Tackling consumer information asymmetry and perceived uncertainty for luxury re-commerce through seller signals," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Lynch, John G, Jr & Marmorstein, Howard & Weigold, Michael F, 1988. "Choices from Sets Including Remembered Brands: Use of Recalled Attributes and Prior Overall Evaluations," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 15(2), pages 169-184, September.
    6. Henkel, Laura & Toporowski, Waldemar, 2021. "Hurry up! The effect of pop-up stores’ ephemerality on consumers’ intention to visit," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    7. Ravi Mehta & Meng Zhu, 2016. "Creating When You Have Less: The Impact of Resource Scarcity on Product Use Creativity," Journal of Consumer Research, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(5), pages 767-782.
    8. Omar, Nor Asiah & Nazri, Muhamad Azrin & Ali, Mohd Helmi & Alam, Syed Shah, 2021. "The panic buying behavior of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Examining the influences of uncertainty, perceptions of severity, perceptions of scarcity, and anxiety," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    9. Sansome, Kate & Conduit, Jodie & Wilkie, Dean, 2025. "Consumers demand transparency… but do they actually engage? Exploring motives and interactions with brand transparency information," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    10. Bai, Kaige & Liu, Yuliang, 2025. "Scarcity, symbolism, and social identity (3S): Unpacking drivers of conspicuous consumption of virtual gear in the metaverse," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    11. H. Leibenstein, 1950. "Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers' Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 64(2), pages 183-207.
    12. Ma, Xiangyang & Ren, Jiawen & Khor, Xianghui & Wang, Ruina & Li, Tieshan & Lang, Xiaoping, 2025. "Influencing mechanisms of live streamer's language strategies on product sales," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    13. Saini, Yvonne K. & Lynch, John G., 2016. "The effects of the online and offline purchase environment on consumer choice of familiar and unfamiliar brands," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 702-705.
    14. Huang, Huiling & Liu, Stephanie Q. & Kandampully, Jay & Bujisic, Milos, 2020. "Consumer Responses to Scarcity Appeals in Online Booking," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    15. Alexander, Rachel, 2020. "Emerging roles of lead buyer governance for sustainability across global production networks," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100908, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Tang, Honghong & Li, Lin & Su, Song, 2022. "Experiencing less leads to the use of more: The effect of a scarcity mindset on product usage," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 139-148.
    17. Rachel Alexander, 2020. "Emerging Roles of Lead Buyer Governance for Sustainability Across Global Production Networks," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(2), pages 269-290, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dash, Ganesh & Alharthi, Majed & Albarrak, Mansour & Aggarwal, Shalini, 2024. "Saudi millennials’ panic buying behavior during pandemic and post-pandemic: Role of social media addiction and religious values and commitment," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    2. Vranceanu, Diana Maria & Tuclea, Claudia Elena & Schiopu, Andreea Fortuna, 2025. "Consumer fear and responses in proximity to war," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    3. Li, Hui & Xu, Yunjie & Huang, Lihua, 2021. "When less is more? The contingent effect of product supply limitation in the release of new electronic products," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    4. Jamalnia, Aboozar & Gong, Yu & Govindan, Kannan, 2023. "Sub-supplier's sustainability management in multi-tier supply chains: A systematic literature review on the contingency variables, and a conceptual framework," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    5. Bahadır Ayar & Huriye Şebnem Burnaz, 2025. "The nexus of scarcity and donation: exploring the interplay of construal of resources, well-being, trust, and efficacy in nonprofit fundraising," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 22(2), pages 373-411, June.
    6. Yan Shi & Xue Yang, 2026. "Virtual reality stimulating customer creativity in product co-development," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    7. Basit Ali Bhat & Manpreet Kaur Makkar & Nitin Gupta, 2024. "Corporate governance for sustainability: Connecting environmental, social and economic goals," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(3), pages 2754-2765, June.
    8. Alishba & Muhammad Abrar & Faiqa Kiran, 2023. "The Role Of Perceived Severity And Anticipated Regret In Predicting Panic Buying Behavior," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 12(2), pages 164-170.
    9. Jin Sun & Chen Chen & Junmei Lan, 2022. "Direct Expression or Indirect Transmission? An Empirical Research on the Impacts of Explicit and Implicit Appeals in Green Advertising," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-19, December.
    10. Ari Van Assche & Kristin Brandl, . "Harnessing power within global value chains for sustainable development," UNCTAD Transnational Corporations Journal, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    11. Pradeep Kumar & Milind Kumar Sharma, 2025. "Sustainable Manufacturing Practices in Global Context," Circular Economy and Sustainability, Springer, vol. 5(7), pages 5903-5933, December.
    12. Fontana, Enrico & Öberg, Christina & Poblete, León, 2021. "Nominated procurement and the indirect control of nominated sub-suppliers: Evidence from the Sri Lankan apparel supply chain," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 179-192.
    13. Sarraf, Shagun & Kushwaha, Amit Kumar & Kar, Arpan Kumar & Dwivedi, Yogesh K. & Giannakis, Mihalis, 2024. "How did online misinformation impact stockouts in the e-commerce supply chain during COVID-19 – A mixed methods study," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    14. Enrico Fontana & Muhammad Atif & Ammar Ali Gull, 2021. "Corporate social responsibility decisions in apparel supply chains: The role of negative emotions in Bangladesh and Pakistan," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(6), pages 1700-1714, November.
    15. Jamalnia, Aboozar & Gong, Yu & Govindan, Kannan & Bourlakis, Michael & Mangla, Sachin Kumar, 2023. "A decision support system for selection and risk management of sustainability governance approaches in multi-tier supply chain," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 264(C).
    16. Swoboda, Bernhard & Sinning, Carolina, 2020. "How country development and national culture affect the paths of perceived brand globalness to consumer behavior across nations," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 58-73.
    17. Meng, Jie & Chen, Kai, 2024. "Rethinking preemptive consumption: Building mechanisms of reciprocity, contextuality, and risk hedging across scenarios," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    18. Soltanzadeh, Shima & Rafiee, Majid & Weber, Gerhard-Wilhelm, 2024. "Disruption, panic buying, and pricing: A comprehensive game-theoretic exploration," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    19. Kissi, Evans & Herzig, Christian, "undated". "Governance of Decent Work in Ghana’s Cocoa Industry: Implications for Economic and Social Upgrading," 61st Annual Conference, Berlin, Germany, September 22-24, 2021 317070, German Association of Agricultural Economists (GEWISOLA).
    20. Pan, Xiaodan & Dresner, Martin & Li, Guang & Mantin, Benny, 2024. "Stocking up on hand sanitizer: Pandemic lessons for retailers and consumers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:89:y:2026:i:pa:s0969698925003467. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.