UNAVAILABILITY AND THE EVALUATION OF GOODS

In this article we summarize several views on how consumers react to the unavailability of consumer goods. The focus of the article is on how psychological theories can be used to enrich economic demand theory, and more specifically the understanding of the relationship of availability characteristics and consumer preference. We discuss the different forms and causes for limited availability and how they affect the evaluation of goods. We review economic-psychological theories such as reactance theory, frustration theory, commodity theory and behavioural cost theory and recent research findings to come to an enrichment of the traditional, i.e., microeconomic view on how consumers evaluate goods of limited availability.