Accidentally on purpose: strategic ostensible demarketing

When BMW announced in 1997 that it was having to restrict supply to the UK market, this was an example of strategic ostensible demarketing.  

• It was ostensible because it is clear that no rationing of these luxury cars happened: the company's sales kept rising from 60,000 cars back then to 180,000 in 2012.
• It was strategic because it was a decision made and announced by BMW itself.
• It was demarketing because the threat of restricting supply seems to have been made in order to boost sales.

Graphic from psdpond.com

BMW, like Coca-Cola, Heinz, supermarkets and the music industry were happy to profit from the theory of psychological reactance, which predicts that when you take something away from people they only desire it more. This may be an accidental outcome (we could call this serendipitous marketing, and was what Coca-Cola claimed had happened), or it may be a clear choice (Kotler and Levy defined ostensible demarketing as "giving the appearance of demarketing" 1977).  

It is almost impossible to find examples that conform to Kotler and Levy's definition: to do so the company must have admitted that their intention all along was to deceive the public. Coca-Cola, with sales and market share rising following demarketing, shrugged it off saying "We are not smart enough for that" (Clifford 2009). BMW said nothing but kept importing the cars and counting the money.


References

Clifford, Stephanie (2009), “Coca-Cola Deleting ‘Classic’ From Coke Label”,
Kotler, Philip and Sidney Levy (1971), “Demarketing, yes, demarketing”Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 74-80