PREFERENCE FOR EXPERIENCES: REGULATORY FOCUS AND THE TRADEOFFS BETWEEN EXPERIENTIAL AND MATERIAL PURCHASES

Consumer often make tradeoffs between experiential and material purchases, which have important implications for consumers as well as marketers. The current research explores the impact of regulatory focus on such tradeoffs. We find that promotion focused individuals have a stronger preference for experiential purchases than those with a prevention focus. This effect is demonstrated in a set of seven studies using both real-world data from Instagram (Study 1) and Google Trends (Study 2) and experimental data (Studies 3—7) that utilize different operationalizations of regulatory focus (trait vs. primed) and purchase type (a wide variety of choice sets as well as purchase framing). Furthermore, we show that the influence of regulatory focus on the material—experiential tradeoffs is driven by consumers’ focus of attention. Finally, we discuss the theoretical significance of our results as well as their practical applications in designing effective advertising and digital marketing strategies.