Regulatory focus and preference reversal between hedonic and utilitarian consumption

This article explores the impact of consumers' regulatory goals on their relative focus on hedonic (versus utilitarian) benefits of products. Drawing from extant literature, we argue that promotion-focused consumers will exhibit more favorable attitude towards a product when its hedonic benefit...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Roy, Rajat, Ng, Sharon
Other Authors: Nanyang Business School
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/107246
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/17838
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:This article explores the impact of consumers' regulatory goals on their relative focus on hedonic (versus utilitarian) benefits of products. Drawing from extant literature, we argue that promotion-focused consumers will exhibit more favorable attitude towards a product when its hedonic benefits are highlighted in comparison to its utilitarian benefits. Prevention-focused consumers on the other hand will exhibit more favorable attitude towards a product when its utilitarian benefits are highlighted in comparison to its hedonic benefits. We further argue that this effect is moderated by contextual factors, such as evaluation mode. In addition, we argue that the posited difference only holds when the hedonic and utilitarian products are evaluated individually. When the two products are evaluated jointly, both promotion and prevention-focused individuals will exhibit more favorable attitude towards the hedonic product. Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses and findings supported our predictions.