Regulatory Focus and the Use of Time in the Evaluation of Persuasive Messages Pressing Preference for Prevention: The Impact of Temporal Construal on the Persuasiveness of Prevention versus Promotion Framed Product Information”

SESSION OVERVIEW In recent years, consumer researchers have increasingly studied self-regulation issues, acknowledging that consumer decisions do not take place in a “motivational vacuum” (Pham and Higgins 2005). In particular, regulatory focus theory (Higgins 1997) proposes two distinct motivational systems regulating behavior: promotion and prevention focus. Individuals in a promotion focus follow a strategy emphasizing the pursuit of gains (or the avoidance of nongains). Individuals in a prevention focus follow a strategy emphasizing the avoidance of losses (or the pursuit of non-losses). Considerable consumer research showed that these foci differ not only in how goals are framed, but also in how they influence persuasion (e.g., Lee and Aaker 2004), which suggests that regulatory focus influences both the type of evaluative content and the type of evaluation strategy that follows (Pham and Higgins 2005). Our objective in this session is to show that the duality of promotion and prevention also does not express itself in a temporal vacuum, and that consumers in these foci actively and differently use time in shaping their attitudes (Pennington et al.; Sellier and Chattopadhyay; Jain et al.). Therefore, the topic we propose is: how consumers in different regulatory foci differently use temporal cues in shaping their evaluations and ways of thinking. While the notion of time as a resource is not new to consumer research, almost no work has been examining how time interacts with regulatory focus (except Pennington and Roese 2003). We present instances of how consumers in a promotion or a prevention focus strategically use time when evaluating messages. We operationalize time in three ways: construed time (Pennington et al.), experienced time (Sellier and Chattopadhyay), and time processed (Jain et al.). If all three papers look at the persuasive impact of the interaction between time and regulatory focus, they each address substantially different questions: Pennington et al. ask if a prevention-framed versus a promotion-framed message is equally persuasive when a product is to be purchased in the near versus the distant future. Sellier and Chattopadhyay examine whether a short rather than a moderate download time always lead to more positive website evaluations. Jain et al. ask whether consumers process different parts of comparative ads at different times, depending on their regulatory focus. In addition, these papers present findings of both theoretical and practical significance: Pennington et al. find that when a purchase is temporally proximal, consumers prefer prevention-framed rather than promotion-framed messages; when a purchase is temporally distant, consumers equally like preventionand promotion-framed messages. Jain et al. find that when processing a comparative ad, prevention-focused participants have lower evaluations of the comparison brand when they are exposed to a negative rather than a positive comparison frame; promotion participants evaluate the comparison brand equally across both types of frames. One reason for this asymmetry is that preventionfocused consumers evaluate the comparison brand first, while promotion-focused consumers evaluate the advertised brand first. Thus, when different parts of the message are integrated leads to different evaluations of the comparison brand. Finally, Sellier and Chattopadhyay find that while promotion-focused participants evaluate a website more negatively when experiencing a moderate (5-10 s.) rather than a short (0-1 s.) download time when they click on a link, the reverse occurs for prevention-focused participants. Together, our findings suggest that depending on their motivational approach, consumers differently use time when shaping their evaluations; time is attributed distinct values, resulting in the same persuasive message to predictably vary in persuasiveness.