Chronic Regulatory Focus: Resist impulse consumption or let it happen?

Abstract

Purpose -The central objective of this research was to analyze the moderating role of chronic regulatory focus in impulse consumption when individuals are exhausted of self-control energies (ego depletion). In addition, we sought to examine the relationship between regulatory adjustment and the affective and cognitive processes of impulse decision making.Design/methodology/approach -The study was performed through an experiment. Data analysis was done using the Johnson-Neyman floodlight technique, which is recommended when the independent variable is continuous, so as not to transform it into a dichotomous variable, thus avoiding the loss of information.Findings -The results provide evidence that individuals with a profile of being vigilant about impulse decisions (focus on prevention), that is, with greater self-control in their decisions, end up spending more self-control energy than individuals who do not have this concern (focus on promotion), resulting in higher impulse consumption.Originality/value -The main contribution is a counterintuitive result that individuals who should be better prepared to withstand impulse consumption, with greater self-control, end up consuming more on impulse because they expend more energy in an attempt to control themselves.

Regulatory focus and construal level theory on low-income consumer indebtedness: Evidence from an emerging market

“…So far, it was pointed out that there was a strong differentiation between promotion and prevention orientations in the context of decision-making (e.g. Costa et al. , 2018; Xu and Chen, 2020).…”

“…In the initial part of the experiment, regulatory focus manipulation was carried out through the same procedure of Freitas and Higgins (2002) and Costa et al. (2018).…”

“…It is noteworthy that promotion and prevention focus exist simultaneously in individuals. For this reason, they can be influenced and induced because they do not always represent an invariable state (Costa et al. , 2018).…”

“…For instance, RFT has proved to be worth explaining impulsive consumer behaviour (e.g. Costa et al. , 2018; Krishna et al.…”

Exploring the inhibitory effect of maximising mindset on impulse buying

“…For example, there was evidence that reduction strategies and interventions could reduce impulse purchases (Dholakia, 2000). The literature on resistance to impulse buying demonstrated that several personality variables could restrain impulse buying, such as self‐control (Efendi et al, 2019; Iyer et al, 2020; Moayery et al, 2019; Sultan et al, 2012), prevention focus (Freitas da Costa et al, 2018), mindfulness (Dhandra, 2020), self‐monitoring (Sharma et al, 2010; Sultan et al, 2012) and dignity (Bandyopadhyay, 2020; Dhandra, 2020). Some of the situation variables that prevented impulse buying had a continuous mitigating impact (Dholakia et al, 2005; Sultan et al, 2012), experiences after impulse purchase (Mittal et al, 2018; Spiteri Cornish, 2020), and crowding in space (Bandyopadhyay, 2020).…”