[dragonwriter]

> For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, people sensed toilet paper might soon become hard to find

No, it actually became hard to find quite rapidly, and remains so (with some relief as reopening progresses), because people stopped going out and using facilities that use commercial paper and therefore were using lots more home paper, and commercial and home-use toilet paper are different products with different supply chains, neither of which has much excess capacity above normal levels and which cannot easily shift to the other.

Hoarding was an overblown factor to which too much was attributed early on by observer’s who don't understand the relevant supply chain dynamics; higher prices would perhaps have reduced it (OTOH, they might not—rapidly rising prices often spur stockpiling-before-it-gets-higher the same way as anticipated or perceived unavailability), but it wouldn't have made a significant difference in the dynamics except that everyone who was able to get toilet paper would have paid even more.

[bostik]

To be fair, toilet paper is in a very special product category. It is used by everyone (sudden interest in bidettes notwithstanding), is pretty cheap, weighs very little and takes up an absolutely enormous amount of shelf space relative to its unit cost.

When the panic buying started here in the UK, people were stocking up 2x or 3x the amounts they'd normally buy. You don't need that many customers hauling out multiple 24-roll bags to completely exhaust the in-store stock. Sure, the managers would be stocking up as fast as they could, but even with 80+ pallets per restocking round, customers going locust will have them wiped out in no time.

This resulted in the very predictable photos of empty supermarket shelves. Toilet paper shelves were particularly empty because they couldn't hold that many sales units in the first place.

No wonder the stores imposed limits on how many units of product, or even category, you could buy.