Promotion and Prevention in Consumer Decision Making: State of the Art and Theoretical Propositions

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how regulatory focus theory, a theory of motivation and self-regulation, can be drawn upon to explain a variety of consumer decision making phenomena. We briefly review the major tenets of the theory, which proposes a fundamental distinction between two modes of self-regulation called promotion and prevention. Drawing on existing empirical evidence and new conceptual analyses, we then develop a series of theoretical propositions about the effects of promotion and prevention on consumer decision making. These propositions are organized along the traditional stages of the decision making process postulated by standard consumer behavior theory (i.e., problem recognition, information search, consideration set formation, etc.). Some of these propositions have already received empirical support, but most await formal empirical testing in consumer research. This propositional inventory can thus be viewed as a research agenda for studying the role of regulatory focus in consumer decision making.