Last year, a brand wanted to invite me to dinner. I was very busy, so I think I should politely refuse it, but I glanced at the name of the restaurant and immediately jumped out of my seat and agreed to have dinner together. This restaurant is the one I tried several times, but no availability seat. It has been named one of the best restaurants in the world by many food magazines. It only receive a table with 10 guests per night, so you can imagine that there are a couple million people in the town, and how many people are waiting in line. Others line up for a few hours, but they line up at least a few months. Therefore, the price of the meal has reached the price of a thousand dollar per person. Making consumers "hungry" has become an important marketing tactic. This tactic is often referred to as "hunger marketing."
Hunger marketing is a marketing tool that maintains high profits and enhances brand value-added by deliberately reducing production, creating an “illusion” of short supply. It seems that the purpose of hunger marketing is to strictly control the output, so that the supply end is always far less than the demand side, creating the illusion of oversupply, "hungry" the consumer, and then raise the price and gain profits. But in fact, hunger itself limits sales, so profits are not necessarily big. Therefore, the real purpose of hunger marketing is not for profit, but for brand value added.
How to use hunger marketing?
We must remember that there are three prerequisites for successful use of "hunger marketing".
First, this product must be irreplaceable. You said that I only sell 7 dumplings today，people say so I can eat croissant, this is not the case;
Second, the consumer's mentality is not mature enough, they are willing, even like to chase novelty and scarcity;
Third, the market competition is not fierce, if the world is selling dumplings, you say that your dumplings only have 7 available today, consumers can turn around and buy someone else's.
Example： Hermès classic bag Birkin and Kelly
Hermès, they have done the "hunger marketing" to the extreme. Hermès has a classic bag of Birkin and Kelly, priced from 10K to 200K, but it usually out of stock. Many people are waiting in line. The long queue of queues has spurred people's desires, and Hermes said that they are very common in the queue for three or five years. When you ask for a reason, store manager must tell you with a bitter face, the bag is too difficult to make and difficult to mass production, because it is handmade. It is difficult to mass produce, which is an alias for many organizations to give "hunger marketing".
Summary: Advantage & Disadvantage of using hunger marketing
There are three preconditions for using hunger marketing. Products are irreplaceable, consumers are immature, and market competition is not intense.
Hunger marketing also has a lot of side effects, it is worth noting.
First, customer churn. Excessive hunger marketing is to “send” customers to competitors. Second, customer is disgusted. Excessive hunger marketing will make consumers hungry and calm, feel fooled, and have an aversion to the brand.