Three Essays on Regulatory Focus, Consumer Creativity, and Co-Creation
Authors:   , Naletelich Kelly 
Published: February 2025

Co-creation has been conceptualized in a number of ways but is generally referred to as an ongoing partnership between a firm and stakeholders (i.e. consumers) to collaboratively identify and solve mutually beneficial issues. While current scholarship has deepened our knowledge about the process of including consumers in the co-production of value, much remains to be learned. This is particularly true with respect to the consumer behavior side of the discipline as it pertains to creativity and motivation. Thus, the focus of the following three essays is to investigate how customer participation in the ideation of products and advertising influences down-stream responses, depending upon an individual's regulatory focus. According to regulatory focus theory, individuals are motivated to pursue their goals based upon two distinct self-regulatory systems known as promotion and prevention. Promotion-focused consumers are most concerned with the achievement of accomplishments and aspirations, which often results in approach oriented behavior. In contrast, prevention focused individuals seek to avoid negative end states, such as losses, and therefore are concerned with their security, duties, and obligations, resulting in avoidance-related behavior. These two distinct motivational states influence the way these individuals approach creative goals, which shares commonalities with co-creation. By its very nature, the goal of co-creation is to develop novel output, which often requires creativity. However, the way promotion versus prevention consumers approach creativity significantly varies, and therefore, the purpose of the present research is to understand how regulatory focus interacts with co-creation across three specific contexts to influence consumer responses. Essay 1, titled "From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Using Analogies to Increase Consumer-Brand Outcomes," finds across two studies that when engaging in co-creation, promotion focused individuals have significantly greater purchase intentions if first given an analogical reasoning task prior to a co-creation activity. Prevention-focused consumers (who are often considered less creative) can also experience heightened creativity and purchase intentions if first primed with images having common ground (near analogies) as inspiration, compared to promotion individuals who need images with less common ground (far analogies). In addition, study 1 found that an analogical reasoning task produces ideas that are significantly more creative than providing no task, whereas study 2 finds that far visual analogies produce ideas that are significantly more creative than near analogies. Two post-hoc studies also provide additional insights. Essay 2, titled "Advertising Co-Creation to Decease Texting and Driving: A Regulatory Focus Perspective," demonstrates that co-creation and creativity can also be helpful within a social marketing context (i.e. texting and driving). Construal level theory is combined with regulatory focus theory to show how user generated advertisements about the dangers of texting and driving are more effective at decreasing harmful behavior than an ad that was not self-created. However, it depends upon who the advertisement is created for (i.e. social distance). Across 4 studies, essay 2 finds that a co-created advertisement, as opposed to an ad that was no self-created, is more effective at reducing cell phone related distracted driving because it encourages deeper processing of information which then increases mental imagery and advertisement believability. However, the effectiveness of a co-created ad for decreasing harmful texting behavior can be further enhanced by asking promotion focused consumers to create a socially far advertisement (i.e. ad for an average college student) vs a socially near advertisement (i.e. ad for best friend) for prevention focused individuals. Analytical vs. imagery processing are offered as explanations. Essay 3, titled "Regulatory Focus and Creativity: How an Episodic Induction Enhances Self-Perceived Levels of Creativity and Downstream Consumer-Brand Responses," explores the differences between prevention and promotion individuals pertaining to their self-views of creativeness and how this influences brand responses. Specifically, 5 studies demonstrate that promotion individuals have more positive brand responses (i.e. willingness to pay) when engaging in a creative brand encounter because they have more certainty in their own ideas which increases self-perceived level of creativity. However, prevention individuals can also experience positive outcomes by appealing to their episodic memory through a remembering the past task, which helps them to have more certainty in their own ideas which then increases self-perceived level of creativity. These positive outcomes can be further strengthened by prompting prevention consumers to remember a positive past experience. In summary, these three essays provide a solid foundation of how regulatory focus interacts with co-creation and creativity to influence down-stream responses. Essay 1 provides evidence for the merits of giving consumers a creative task that matches their regulatory focus prior to engaging in a creative brand encounter. Next, essay 2 explores how advertising co-creation can be an effective way of reducing texting and driving behavior among college students. Lastly, essay 3 examines how self-perceived creativity influences downstream brand responses depending upon one's regulatory focus.