Previous research has linked aggression to a lack of resources such as food and water. Promotional events, such as Black Friday, have led to violence in environments that are resource-rich.
Darren Dahl will explore the use of a model of scarcity by advertisers in their promotion of products to drive sales in his talk “ ‘Only One Left – I’ll Fight you for It!’: Scarcity Promotion Advertising and Aggressive Behaviour” on March 13, from 10:30am to 12pm, at N201 Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus. The event is open to the public.
Dahl is the BC Innovation Council professor at the University of British Columbia, as well as the senior associate dean and director of Robert H. Lee Graduate School. In this talk, Dahl suggests that marketplace aggression is not just the abundance of crowds during shopping holidays, but can actually originate beforehand from the publicity of scarcity promotion advertising.
The mere exposure to a scarcity advertisement for a desirable luxury product can lead to increased aggressive behaviour. He proposes that this increased aggression is driven by the perceived potential threat other consumers pose to obtaining the target product.
Dahl’s current research interests are in the areas of new product design and development, creativity, consumer product adoption and the role of social influence in consumer behaviour. His research has been presented at numerous national and international conferences, and published in journals, such as Management Science, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research.
He is currently editor-in-chief of the Journal of Consumer Research and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing and the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
For more information, visit the York University website.
By Shanice Grocia, communications assistant