FOMO: The Psychology Behind the Marketing Technique

Ishaa SN
May 30
3 min read

Houston, TX

Person in red shirt sits by bookshelf, holding phone, surrounded by notification icons. Background is purple, mood is busy. — FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

You’re up late at night scrolling through social media and you see your friends or family having fun without you. How would you feel? Maybe you are sad, jealous, and wondering what you did wrong to make them exclude you. Or you’ve developed something called FOMO, which stands for Fear of Missing Out. It is a feeling or perception where one believes that other people are having fun, experiencing new things, or just living a better life than you. This feeling occurs when a person uses social media, but it can also happen outside of social media. A good example is when an athlete sees someone, they look up to working out at the gym 4-5 days a week and feels the stress associated with the belief that they can’t keep up to such a high standard and commit to that time (Clinic, 2024). It can result in worsening anxiety, stress, depression, and a lesser quality of life. FOMO is similar to the phenomenon called, “Keeping up with the Joneses,” which is when a person feels pressured to meet or exceed your neighbor's social status, wealth, and popularity.

FOMO promotes a type of marketing that is getting exceedingly popular and uses human’s reactive nature to sell products. Because humans don’t want to miss out on any chances, which dates back thousands of years, FOMO Marketing creates a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out by tapping into that nature of wanting to fit in and combining it with today’s impulse to constantly buy what we see on the internet. Some examples of FOMO marketing include limited stock and free shipping.

Limited Stock:

Limited stock is when people buy when there’s limited stock or not enough items to satisfy consumer demand. Additionally, having limited stock gives a sense of exclusivity to the people who decide to buy the limited item and people also feel rushed to make a purchase. This is shown in Amazon which sometimes states, “until supplies last...” This is an example of FOMO that makes people feel rushed to buy a product (How Effective Is FOMO in Marketing (14 Examples and Results). There’s also a principle behind this called the scarcity principle, basically the same principle as FOMO.

Free Shipping:

A UPS survey states that people are 88% more likely to buy with free shipping (Commerce, 2025). Free Shipping can be the final push to buy when customers are about to abandon their carts. Free shipping can also guarantee customer loyalty. Customers also prefer free shipping over discounts and high shipping costs are one of the reasons more than 60% of people abandon their carts. Therefore, free shipping is definitely an example of FOMO, and it is more effective to induce FOMO with a countdown timer as well. For example, some stores may say “Free shipping ends in three hours,” adding to that FOMO.

In conclusion, FOMO, the fear of missing out, is the belief that people might be having a better life, having more fun, and experiencing better things than you. It uses human’s reactive nature to sell products and is mostly in social media, but it can occur outside of social media. It can result in worsening anxiety, depression, and a lesser quality of life. It’s becoming exceedingly popular as a marketing technique and takes advantage of human nature to get people to buy online. This is shown in free shipping and limited-stock items in many online stores. Some other examples can be timed checkouts, e.g., order within the next four hours or coupon validity, e.g. offer valid for three months. Therefore, we must learn about FOMO and how to identify it to not decide on impulsive purchases for products we don’t need.

Bibliography:

Gupta, M., & Sharma, A. (2021). Fear of missing out: A brief overview of origin, theoretical underpinnings and relationship with mental health. World Journal of Clinical Cases, 9(19), 4881–4889. https://doi.org/10.12998/wjcc.v9.i19.4881

Wikipedia contributors. (2025, January 22). Fear of missing out. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

Clinic, C. (2024b, June 27). FOMO is real: How the fear of missing out affects your health. Cleveland Clinic. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/understanding-fomo