Impact of Regulatory Focus on the Perception of Discrete and Aggregate Framed Benefits

摘要

Consumers often come across benefits which recur over time-for example, a weight loss program which promises a loss of '20 pounds over 4 weeks'. Instead of expressing the benefit in a more aggregate frame, a marketer may choose to express it in a less aggregate frame, such as a weight loss of "5 pounds per week for 4 weeks." Prior research has investigated the framing of recurring product attributes on product evaluation (Gourville, 1998; Burson et al., 2009; Goldstein et al., 2016). In this research, we explore the way people's motivation state affects the perception of such benefits depending on the level of aggregation at which they are expressed. Drawing from the literature on the regulatory focus theory (Foster & Higgins, 2005; Higgins 1998), we hypothesize that promotion focused individuals, who are more likely to process only the most salient information, will perceive a more aggregate frame to be higher in magnitude due to the larger number with which the benefit is expressed. However, prevention focused individuals, who process information in a piecemeal manner, will take all relevant information into account. Hence, the level of aggregation shall have no effect on their evaluation.