Oooo, It’s So Exclusive!

Clothing industries have used the tactic of creating scarcity to drive up demand for such products as a T-shirt or a pair of ultimately disposable sneakers. Giving something that could have been mass-produced an element of uniqueness can have the same effect. … Marketers can add individual flavor to what they are selling to make consumers want it with abandon.

—excerpted from “Punk Marketing,” (Collins, March 2007, $25.95) by Richard Laermer and Mark Simmons; for more, www.harpercollins.com