A local mother was psyched to get her daughter a much sought-after spot in an extracurricular training school over winter break. The unnamed school had developed quite a reputation for being difficult to get into, so the mother felt like it was quite a coup that her daughter was accepted, according to a recent report on Shanghai TV Station.

Unfortunately for the mother and her daughter, a second grader called Duoduo, the school didn't build its reputation based on high-quality teaching or excellent results for its students. Instead, it employed slick marketing methods to make it seem as if its classes were scarcer and more sought-after than they actually were.

A former employee said that the school paid websites to publish rankings of local training centers and put it at the top of the list, according to the report. Employees of the school then went online posing as parents. They started forum discussions about how the school's classes were so popular that they couldn't get their children enrolled.

When real parents approached the school about enrolling their children, employees told them that all prospective students had to take a lengthy entrance examination to show they had what it takes to study there, the report said. In reality, however, no one knows if the school actually rejected any prospective student based on his or her test results.

Still, at least some of the parents believed the school had selective admissions criteria. Shanghai TV Station reported that parents started queuing as early as 4 am just to get a chance for their children to take the school's entrance exam.

Although the school deserves to be criticized for its deceptive marketing, the parents who enrolled their children at the school should also consider how their own irrational mindset led them astray.

Duoduo's mother and the other parents who enrolled their children at the school made several logical mistakes when evaluating its quality. The mistake was to believe that something is good just because it is difficult to obtain.

Although it's true that many excellent schools are difficult to get into, it doesn't mean that a school is excellent just because it is difficult to get into. There can be many reasons why a school is difficult to get into. Most of them have nothing to do with the quality of the education they provide.

One of those reasons - and the one most relevant to this story - is it isn't difficult for businesses to make it seem as if their goods or services are short of supply to drive up demand. Marketers even have a term for the practice. It's called "hunger marketing." Essentially, the concept boils down to making consumers believe something is difficult to buy so they'll want to buy it. Sadly for parents like Duoduo's mother, the ploy worked.

Other parents fell victim to a herd mentality. According to the Shanghai TV Station report, some parents said that they registered for classes at the school just because other parents had done so.

But like scarcity, popularity alone doesn't make a product or service any good. The reason is that popularity tends to feed off itself. As more people do something, the more others want to do it - if only to avoid being left out, or left behind. This is especially true in competitive situations. As it turns out, many parents in Shanghai are hyper competitive about the children's education, making them perfect victims for the school's marketing machinations.

I suspect that parents who enrolled their children at the school because they thought it was hard to get into or because they feared their children would be left behind now regret their decision to do so. I hope they also recognize that their own mind-sets were largely to blame.