Don’t be a hamster! Social appeals to curb panic buying at the point-of-sale

The COVID-19 pandemic confronted retailers with an unprecedented challenge: convincing customers to buy less. Given the ineffectiveness of real-life strategies against panic buying, we explore the power of social appeals to convince consumers of buying less voluntarily. In three multi-method studies based on field and lab data, we demonstrate that the use of social appeals not only comes with favorable marketing outcomes for retailers (i.e., loyalty and attitudes), but that adequately designed social appeals are also a promising instrument to curb undesirable consumer behaviors such as panic buying in a health crisis.