How does consumer regulatory focus impact perceived value and consumption emotions?

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate how individuals’ regulatory focus affects perceived value and consumption emotions and how differently perceived value and emotions influence the future behavioral intentions of ethnic restaurant customers. Design/methodology/approach The proposed model was empirically tested with the online survey sent to frequent American travelers who have had dining experiences at Asian restaurants. A total of 435 valid responses were obtained and analyzed by means of structural equation modeling analysis. Findings The results indicated that promotion-focused individuals are more likely to perceive both hedonic and utilitarian values, and as a result experience positive emotions while dining at Asian restaurants. On the other hand, prevention focus was not significantly related to either hedonic or utilitarian values in itself, and it has a significant effect on negative emotions. The results also demonstrated that perceived hedonic and utilitarian values directly and/or indirectly influence behavioral intentions through consumption emotions. Originality/value This study contributes to existing knowledge on regulatory focus theory by identifying significant theoretical relationships among cognitive and affective consumption responses and regulatory focus. Specifically, the main contributions include suggesting novel perspectives that promotion focus is associated with consumers’ value perception, whereas prevention focus is not, and making a first attempt to discover a relationship between regulatory foci and two general types of consumption emotions (positive and negative emotions) and identifying theoretically important associations that promotion focus (vs prevention focus) is more strongly related to positive emotions (vs negative emotions).

Effects of Regulatory Focus and Emotions on Information Preferences: The Affect-as-Information Perspective

“…Different regulatory focus types imply different sensitivities to information about an emotion ( Shah and Higgins, 2001 ). Promotion-focused individuals pursue growth-related outcomes and are more likely to experience happiness, while prevention-focused individuals pursue safety-related outcomes and are more likely to experience sorrow ( Higgins, 1998 ; Ouyang et al, 2015 ; Song and Qu, 2019 ). Previous studies found that promotion focus can induce heuristic processing, which enables people to make judgments based on subjective emotions, while prevention focus can induce analytic processing, which promotes judgments less based on subjective emotions ( Friedman and Förster, 2000 , 2001 ; Pham et al, 2001 ).…”

The Relationships among Perceived Value, Intention to Use Hashtags, eWOM, and Brand Loyalty of Air Travelers

“…Marketing literature often emphasizes the necessity of utilitarian values more inevitable practical properties, potentially including both loss and gain, while the hedonic value is more pleasure-oriented, and empirical attributes only provide profit [2,25]. Chernev (2004) argued that promotion-focused goals are better matched with hedonic value, while a prevention focus is more likely to fit utilitarian value [2,26]. Also, Hong, Lin, & Hsieh (2017) argued that the hedonic and utilitarian values had a significant impact on customers' intention to continue using the smartwatch [4].…”

“…At the beginning of the 21st century, blogs became one of the most popular social media formats. People could communicate by posting an article online or providing feedback as readers [1,2].…”

Testing Model of Purchase Intention for Fast Food in Mexico: How do Consumers React to Food Values, Positive Anticipated Emotions, Attitude toward the Brand, and Attitude toward Eating Hamburgers?

“…Through this research, a model with these variables was proposed because there is a synergistic effect between them. The approach rests with the effects of food values and positive early emotions directed towards the form of the attitude as a predecessor of the purchase intention [12,13,14]. This model was designed from the separation of attitudes: one directed towards the act of eating and another towards the brand.…”