pressures will give us a good indication of how much we would want
to pay for it—the less available it is, the more valuable to us it will be.
But very often we don’t want a thing purely for the sake of owning it.
We want it, instead, for its utility value; we want to eat it or drink it or
touch it or hear it or drive it or otherwise use it. In such cases it is vital
to remember that scarce things do not taste or feel or sound or ride or
work any better because of their limited availability.
Although this is a simple point, it can often escape us when we exper-
ience the heightened desirability that scarce items naturally possess. I
can cite a family example. My brother Richard supported himself
through school by employing a compliance trick that cashed in hand-
somely on the tendency of most people to miss that simple point. In
fact, his tactic was so effective that he had to work only a few hours
each weekend for his money, leaving the rest of the time free for his
studies.
Richard sold cars, but not in a showroom nor on a car lot. He would
buy a couple of used cars sold privately through the newspaper on one
weekend and, adding nothing but soap and water, would sell them at
a decided profit through the newspaper on the following weekend. To
do this, he had to know three things. First, he had to know enough
about cars to buy those that were offered for sale at the bottom of their
blue-book price range but could be legitimately resold for a higher price.
Second, once he got the car, he had to know how to write a newspaper
ad that would stimulate substantial buyer interest. Third, once a buyer
arrived, he had to know how to use the scarcity principle to generate
more desire for the car than it perhaps deserved. Richard knew how to
do all three. For our purposes, though, we need to examine his craft
with just the third.
For a car he had purchased on the prior weekend, he would place an
ad in the Sunday paper. Because he knew how to construct a good ad,
he usually received an array of calls from potential buyers on Sunday
morning. Each prospect who was interested enough to want to see the
car was given an appointment time—the same appointment time. So if six
people were scheduled, they were all scheduled for, say, two o’clock
that afternoon. This little device of simultaneous scheduling paved the
way for later compliance because it created an atmosphere of competi-
tion for a limited resource.
Typically, the first prospect to arrive would begin a studied examin-
ation of the car and would engage in standard car-buying behavior,
such as pointing out any blemishes or deficiencies or asking if the price
was negotiable. The psychology of the situation changed radically,
however, when the second buyer drove up. The availability of the car
to either prospect suddenly became limited by the presence of the other.
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D / 201