FOMO: The Psychology behind the marketing technique
- Ishaa SN
- Oct 24, 2025
- 3 min read
Houston, TX
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 humans’ 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, eg. 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
How effective is FOMO in marketing (14 Examples & Results). (n.d.). https://fomo.com/blog/how-effective-is-fomo-in-marketing-14-examples-results
Commerce, S. (2025, January 16). The psychology of free shipping: Should you offer it? Speed Commerce. https://www.speedcommerce.com/insights/the-psychology-of-free-shipping/
Great post! As consumer behavior evolves, the 'Fear Of Missing Out' is being replaced by a desire for 'Belonging.' Marketing is shifting from high-pressure tactics to community-driven incentives. This is a core pillar we focus on at IGNITECH "Agence marketing maroc" (https://ignitech.ma) when building digital strategies for brands. If a user feels they are missing out on a community rather than just a discount, the long-term LTV increases dramatically.
I enjoyed reading about the psychology of FOMO in marketing! It reminded me of a time when I was stressed about my calculus exams and thought about asking someone to complete my online calculus class for me. But I kept working at it, and in the end, I felt a lot more accomplished. This post is a great reminder that while shortcuts might seem tempting, putting in the effort leads to better long-term outcomes
Reading about FOMO and its role in marketing truly connected with my personal and academic journey because as a PhD student currently and working part-time at Affordable Assignment, providing Assignment help to students, I often see how psychological pressure, urgency, and the fear of falling behind influence people’s decisions, especially in academic life. I still remember my college days when I suffered a lot from these types of hustles, constantly feeling anxious that others were doing better or accessing resources I wasn’t, and that made me really conscious about my studies and my future. That phase of my life developed my deep interest in understanding human psychology, particularly how marketing techniques like FOMO tap into our emotions and insecurities, and it…
Really insightful breakdown of FOMO as a marketing driver — I’ve used this technique in campaigns before, and from my experience working with audience psychology, it’s most effective when it feels authentic rather than manipulative. When I was researching consumer behavior, I noticed that urgency works best when paired with real value, social proof, and transparent messaging, otherwise it can backfire and damage trust. I’ve applied FOMO in product launches, limited-time offers, and email funnels, and the key lesson I learned is that it should amplify genuine demand, not fabricate it. Pairing strong psychological triggers like this with smart SEO also helps ensure the right message reaches the right audience at the right moment, making the tactic more strategic than purely…