---
id: "action-create-scarcity"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["§ An Agent-to-Agent Strategic Playbook"]
tags: ["merchandising", "pricing"]
related: ["framework-a2a-strategic-playbook"]
action: "Keep premium bundles, limited products, and points multipliers exclusive to your own site."
outcome: "Maintains consumer incentive to visit and transact directly on the vendor's platform."
speakers: ["Mikey Vu", "Maureen Burns", "Aaron Cheris"]
sources: ["geo"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-geo"
originDay: 3
articleStem: "hbr-nm-97-retailers-ai-shoppers"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/10/what-should-retailers-do-about-ai-shoppers"
sourceTitle: "What Should Retailers Do About AI Shoppers?"
---
# Create inventory scarcity

## Action — Create inventory scarcity

**Do this:** Keep premium bundles, limited products, and points multipliers exclusive to your own site.
**Expected outcome:** Maintains consumer incentive to visit and transact directly on the vendor's platform.

To force consumers (and their agents) to **care about where the transaction happens**, vendors must withhold certain high-value items from broad agent scraping: limited products, premium bundles, or points multipliers exclusive to the native site. This is dimension 2 of the [[framework-a2a-strategic-playbook]] and complements [[action-build-strategic-moat]]. It is a direct defense against the price-comparison commoditization described in [[concept-retailers-prisoners-dilemma]].


## Related across articles
- [[action-build-strategic-moat]]
- [[action-double-down-community]]