Hurry! Sale Ends Soon: The Impact of Limited Inventory Availability Disclosure on Consumer Responses to Online Stockouts
研究了在线零售中，披露库存有限是否会影响消费者对缺货的反应，发现低库存时缺货反而让消费者更不满，因为竞争购物场景的“损失”加剧了负面体验。
A prevalent challenge for online retail supply chain managers is maintaining and managing adequate inventory levels to support and fulfill consumer orders and purchases. Interestingly, this challenge is not only about maintaining inventory availability, but also how to effectively disclose and communicate inventory availability, particularly if a stockout occurs. This article investigates a conceptual model that explores the impact of online inventory availability disclosure on consumer perceptions in the context of a stockout. Based on expectation disconfirmation theory, the core of the model is the notion that limited inventory availability would stimulate expected consumer competition, which in turn, causes consumers to not be as negatively impacted by stockouts. Contrary to this prediction, however, the results of this experimental study show that consumers are actually more dissatisfied when low inventory availability items are out‐of‐stock. This is likely due to the combined impacts of a stockout encounter and a “loss” of a competitive shopping scenario. Thus, implications of these findings for future research and supply chain practice are offered accordingly.