# What Is Scarcity Marketing? When Limited Drops Build Demand

- URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/blog/what-is-scarcity-marketing/
- Published: 2026-11-01
- Updated: 2026-11-01
- Category: Marketing and distribution
- Publisher: Girişimci Kafası

In The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, Adam Smith passes on what was said of the Dutch in the Spice Islands: they burned whatever spices a fertile season produced beyond what they expected to sell in Europe at a profit they thought sufficient. On islands where they had no settlements, they paid a premium to anyone who gathered the young blossoms and green leaves of the clove and nutmeg trees. Smith had heard that this policy had almost wiped those trees out. The arithmetic was simple: nothing more should grow than they themselves could carry to market.

The botanical historian Thomas Zumbroich describes one more precaution. Every nutmeg that entered the trade was treated with lime, deliberately weakening the seed's power to sprout. You could eat the nutmeg you bought, but you could not plant it.

To break the lock, France had offered a reward in 1750 of twenty thousand pieces of silver to whoever brought twenty-five nutmeg plants to Pondicherry. In the end it was Pierre Poivre who managed it. His name means "pepper" in French, and he had lost part of his right arm in a naval battle in 1745. Of the few seedlings he carried to Île de France, today's Mauritius, in 1753 and 1755, only two survived. After becoming the island's intendant, he sent a secret expedition to the Moluccas in 1769. In June 1770 nutmeg seedlings and seeds reached the island in large numbers. A second voyage in 1771 and 1772, according to Zumbroich, ended the Dutch nutmeg monopoly for good.

Burnt spices, limed seeds, uprooted trees: so much effort went into guarding the scarcity, and all of it was not enough to stop one determined man.

## What is scarcity marketing?

Scarcity marketing means deliberately limiting the supply of a product to make it more desirable. Limited runs, numbered editions, sales that open only at set times and the "drop" model familiar from streetwear are all forms of it. The product appears, sells out and leaves behind a crowd waiting for the next one.

The story of Nerdy Nuts, told by Zachary Crockett in The Hustle, shows both sides of the model at once. Craig Mount and Erika Peterson were making flavoured peanut butter in South Dakota with a second-hand grinder bought on eBay. In June 2020, borrowing from streetwear brands, they began limited drops. After videos from two TikTok creators, demand soared far beyond a single machine that produced 60 jars an hour. As orders piled up, the site began opening only on Sundays. On the first such Sunday in 2020 they made $80,000 in sales in two minutes and had to shut the site again. In August 2020 monthly sales reached $505,862, and jars were changing hands on eBay for $40.

Mount said it created an illusion of scarcity for those who missed out and made those who got a jar feel special. The same summer of 2020 also brought thousands of angry emails and comments; some customers begged on the phone, others told the founders to get back in the kitchen. Mount summed it up plainly: selling out was the best thing for marketing and, logistically, the worst thing that could have happened.

## When does scarcity build demand, and when does it burn trust?

### Make the scarcity real

When a product is handmade, produced in small batches and genuinely limited, its scarcity is information. Selling stock that sits in a warehouse as "only 3 left" is a lie, and sooner or later it shows. The Dutch could only protect their scarcity with force, fire and lime. The day your customers realise they have been fooled, they are ready to go to another Poivre.

### Leave a way in for those who miss out

Every drop creates people who did not get one as well as people who did. A date for the next sale, a waiting list or a clear order of priority keeps the crowd left outside from turning into an angry crowd. A customer who missed out should know how to get it next time.

### Do not mistake a capacity limit for a strategy

At Nerdy Nuts, the drops were a marketing choice; the Sunday window was a necessity forced by production that could not keep up. When scarcity is a marketing decision, you set the calendar; when it is a production problem, the order queue sets it for you. A company that confuses the two cannot deliver the excitement it announces.

### Do not let scarcity replace the product

Being hard to find can make a product look valuable for a while. What brings the second and third purchase is still the taste, the usefulness, the sense that it was worth the wait. Scarcity is the spark; the product itself has to supply the firewood.

## The ones left outside

The word for privileged products, exclusive, comes from the Latin excludere: ex, out, and claudere, to shut. The word itself explains how scarcity works. What makes something valuable is as much the people shut out as the people who get in.

In 1975 the psychologist Stephen Worchel and his colleagues measured this with cookies. Across two experiments, they asked 200 female undergraduates to rate cookies in a jar. Scarce cookies were rated as more attractive than plentiful ones. Cookies that had been plentiful and then became scarce seemed even more valuable than those that were scarce all along. The most interesting finding came last: when the cookies ran low because other people wanted them, they were valued more than when they ran low by accident.

In other words, the real power of scarcity comes from the information that "other people want this too". If that information is true, it grows demand. If it is made up, the day it comes out all you are left with is a customer who was fooled.

## A final word

In the 276th of his Maxims, La Rochefoucauld writes:

> "L'absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu."

Absence lessens ordinary passions and increases great ones, just as the wind blows out candles and fans a fire.

The wind of a drop does the same. Does the desire for your product go out in the wind of waiting, or does it grow?

*To think about how scarcity relates to price, [Startup Pricing: How Do You Put a Price on Your Product?](https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/blog/startup-pricing-how-to-price-your-product/) is worth a read.*