Essays on self-regulation and consumer behaviour
Creators: name: Zhang, Junhou
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2021

description: Essay 1: When do Consumers Value Positive WOM versus Negative WOM? Empirical Evidence from Online Product Reviews Based on the Regulatory Focus Perspective.The literature on online product reviews has been vast and has studied a plethora of phenomena, such as the impact of reviews on sales (e.g., Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006) and, more recently, review helpfulness (e.g., Moore 2015). However, we have not identified any extant research that focuses on exploring how consumers’ underlying cognitive or emotional processes influence their responses to positive versus negative product reviews and hence their perceived value of such reviews. Thus, the current study is motivated to fill such a void in the research on online WOM. We study how consumers’ regulatory foci (Higgins 1997) differentially influence their processing of online product review information and consequently their perceived persuasiveness, diagnosticity, and helpfulness of such information. Also, and more importantly, we consider how consumers’ emotional attachment towards the brand or product in question moderates the relationship between consumers’ regulatory foci and their responses to positive versus negative product reviews. In theorizing about the moderating role, we draw from relevant concepts and theories in the psychology literature, including the negativity bias and motivated reasoning (Kunda 1990). We conducted one experiment to test the hypotheses. Our study is believed to be the first attempt in the online WOM research at approaching online product reviews from an information processing perspective by gaining insights into the psychological mechanisms through which consumers process online product review information. Therefore, it makes a significant contribution to the research on online product reviews and also that on WOM more generally. The research has immediate practical implications for marketers and advertisers, particularly in the management of online product reviews, to which many retailers (e.g., Amazon) are attaching increasing importance.Essay 2: The Effects of Product Innovativeness on Consumers’ Risk Perceptions Towards the Product: The Moderating Role of Regulatory Focus.Product innovativeness has been largely approached from industry and firm perspectives, with the overwhelming emphasis placed on its impact on firm performance. Researchers have repeatedly pointed out or implied that a consumer perspective of product innovativeness would entail an examination of specific product attributes and requirements for behavioral change (e.g., Calantone et al. 2006; Lee and O’Connor 2003). For instance, an innovation that is new to the market may lead to greater product trial by consumers due to its novelty effects relative to other offerings of the firm or the competition, and the innovation may also trigger consumers’ variety-seeking tendencies (Szymanski et al. 2007). Thus far, there has been no more than a sprinkling amount of research on product innovativeness that assumes a consumers’ perspective. Cho and Norbert (2006), for instance, show that consumers’ information processing fluency forms the basis for their judgement of the newness of a product. However, research focusing on consumers’ responses to product innovativeness and how such responses influence consumers’ innovation adoption behavior is woefully lacking. A number of outstanding questions remain to be answered. Most notably, what are the cognitive and emotional mechanisms through which consumers respond to the innovative features of a particular new product? Thus motivated, in this study we make an attempt to add to the new products adoption literature by examining the effects of the innovativeness of high-technology products on consumers’ risk perceptions towards the given product. In doing so, we consider the moderating role of consumers’ regulatory foci (Higgins, 1997, 1998). Specifically, we explore how regulatory focus will influence the relationship between product innovativeness and consumers’ risk perceptions towards the product. To the best of our knowledge, regulatory focus theory has not been employed in the new product diffusion or adoption literature in either marketing or management. We conducted an experiment to test our hypotheses. A major limitation of the study is that we did not consider consumers’ product adoption behaviour as a consequence variable, and this will constitute a focus in our follow-up work.