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

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.

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.

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.

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).