Both marked ‘Out of Stock’ and ‘Sold out’ in online shopping outlets are used for unavailability. Product unavailability and consequent effects on consumers’ behaviors have been studied with great interest for practical purposes. However, there have been few studies mentioning out of stock and sold out in one paper. With the idea that consumers’ cognitive processes interpreting marked ‘Out of Stock’ and ‘Sold out’ may be different, in this paper, we hypothesized the differences of out of stock and sold out in the facets of consumers’ emotion, behaviors, and loyalty on the basis of S-O-R framework. In order to explore the differences, an experimental site was developed, on which the same products were categorized differently as out of stock or sold out. Consumers’ emotions, attitudes and intentions were measured after the experiment. After two weeks, an interview was conducted to ensure the results and to further find out consumers’ everyday behavior in relation to this topic. As results, males and females demonstrated differences in emotion, behavior, and loyalty, with the interaction effect of marked out of stock or sold out. Also, it was shown that the dimensions of emotions affect loyalty with different levels depending on which one was marked between ‘Out of Stock’ and ‘Sold Out.’ Based on our findings, strategic implications are discussed.
