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Guess Who Buys Cheap? The Effect of Consumers’ Goal Orientation on Product Preference
Author(s) -
Choi Woo Jin,
Sun Haoying,
Liu Yan Lucy,
Chen Haipeng Allan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of consumer psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.433
H-Index - 110
eISSN - 1532-7663
pISSN - 1057-7408
DOI - 10.1002/jcpy.1148
Subject(s) - preference , product (mathematics) , quality (philosophy) , promotion (chess) , marketing , orientation (vector space) , perceived quality , regulatory focus theory , business , psychology , advertising , economics , microeconomics , social psychology , purchasing , mathematics , political science , epistemology , politics , law , creativity , philosophy , geometry
The current research examines how goal orientation affects consumer preference among products with different prices. We argue that a less expensive product may have not only lower perceived quality but also greater perceived quality variability. This greater perceived variability provides the opportunity for optimistic, promotion‐oriented consumers to overestimate the quality of the less expensive product. This effect is weaker, however, for a more expensive product that consumers perceive to have less quality variability and which thus provides less room for quality overestimation. As a result, we hypothesize that promotion‐oriented consumers, as compared to prevention‐oriented consumers, will demonstrate a stronger preference for a less expensive product. In a field study and two laboratory experiments, we obtain empirical support both for the hypothesized effect of consumers’ goal orientation on their product preference and for its underlying process. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our results.