Just as coronavirus and the economy are global, so is human behavior. In Spain, one of the products that has first disappeared from supermarket shelves was toilet paper. When the government suspended last week the classes of the students, immediately the social networks were filled with images of customers compulsively filling the shopping carts. And among those snapshots, if anything stood out it was the collection of bulky rolls of toilet paper. Spain is not the only country in which this happened. In Hong Kong, this product was also scarce , as in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore or Australia.
Among the reasons alleged by David Coral, president of the BBDO agency, is the psychological factor, since being a hygienic product gives a feeling of security. But he also adds that everything has to do with a concept that was born with mobile phones , FOMO (acronym for fear of missing out ), that is, fear of missing something, of being left out, in that case, of the technological world. And in this case, “fear of what will happen if I lack what others have, in this case toilet paper, because if you see that people are buying it, you think it is for something and that it is necessary, and in this type of behavior it shows that we are gregarious ”, explains Coral.
Behavior also speaks the ESIC marketing professor Paco Lorente, who clarifies that all this phenomenon is related to the psychology applied to marketing. "Moments of stress make a purchase have a more emotional than rational component, when in a normal situation there is a balance between both elements," says the teacher, who relates the high demand for toilet paper with the fact that the consumer, faced with the possible shortage of a certain product, decides to hoard the largest possible assets . "In a crisis like the one we are experiencing, the products that give us well-being and cleanliness are the ones that will be most in demand," adds the teacher.
However, there is another factor that determines this compulsive purchase: that of the empty shelf. “The packages of toilet paper, due to their volume, occupy a large space inside a supermarket, so there are not too many exposed units, and that makes them quickly run out. The gap left open leads people to think that it is going to be scarce and that generates anxiety, in addition to what the consumer wants is to be in control of the situation, "explains Lorente. In the opinion of this expert, that feeling of scarcity, and marketing strategists well know, is what unleashes the euphoria. This is what happened, remember, with the launch of the Monster High dolls, which were the stars in a Christmas advertising campaign, which turned out to be a success, since few units were put up for sale, and this produced great expectations, because they were sold out immediately. "And made them an object of desire," says the ESIC professor.
Also the academic director of IE Business School's Master in Market Research and Consumer Behavior, Jaime Veiga, justifies the situation speaking of irrational behaviors generated by stress and fear. "A situation of long-term confinement raises doubts about how much I will need, but above all also fear that the product will end," he explains. And it agrees with the rest of the consulted experts that the effect of collective hysteria usually occurs when an article is scarce. "When there are many cans on a shelf, it does not generate anxiety, but if it is missing, there is an urgent need to achieve it," explains Veiga, who believes that all this has been contributed to by social networks, reproducing images that incited unbridled consumption.
The scarcity of a product, unless it obeys a marketing strategy or as it happens in the luxury sector, where limited editions are launched to increase the perception of exclusivity of an item, is something that we were not used to in the first world, says the president of BBDO. "That anxiety to have what someone else has bought, and even more now, is something human," says Caro, who from the Transformative Creativity Association, of which he is a part, sends a message to promote responsible consumption and not run out of stock. .