Beyond Reality: Investigating the Power of Scarcity and Rarity on Consumer Attitudes in Metaverse Fashion Retail

This research explores consumer attitudes and behavior in a metaverse retailing environment, mainly focusing on how perceptions of scarcity and rarity influence consumers’ views of purchasing virtual wearables. Our findings diverge from preconceived notions about scarcity in physical/online retail, opening the door to a new understanding of how metaverse citizens may perceive scarcity of products. While it may appear simple to assume that physical-world strategies can seemingly be exported to virtual worlds, we uncovered a more complex story. The influence of the supply (availability) information on consumer attitudes in the metaverse is mediated by consumers’ need for uniqueness. Specifically, seeing the virtual offerings as relatively abundant increased consumers’ need for uniqueness, which improved the likelihood of purchase, a puzzling result. The mystery is better understood when considering how all items in exclusive collections in the metaverse can preserve their rare status, thereby fully separating scarcity and rarity. Unlike in physical retail environments, our findings indicate an interaction: high product availability (low scarcity) increases the likelihood of purchasing only when product rarity is high. These surprising results provide novel insights for academics and practitioners to consider the combinatorial effects of availability information and product rarity, as well as the virtual customers’ characteristics, particularly their need for uniqueness as a mediator to their attitudes toward virtual products.