REGRET IN REPEAT PURCHASE VERSUS SWITCHING DECISIONS: THE ATTENUATING ROLE OF DECISION JUSTIFIABILITY

• Main Authors: Li-tsung Chan, 詹禮聰
• Other Authors: Hsien-che Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02792062388208102601

碩士 === 大同大學 === 事業經營研究所 === 91 === With increasing globalization of the world economies, market opportunities seem to be more open for consumers. This, in turn, causes broad choices among consumers in order to buy better products. Consumers must often decide whether to continue making decisions as they have been making them or to make them differently. When making these decisions, consumers try to maximize their own satisfaction or utility while choosing an option that protects them from negative emotion. How we evaluate a purchase depends not only on the characteristics of the products we buy but also on the characteristics of products we do not buy. When looking back at purchase decisions, consumers often regret the choices they have made. Regret has been identified as a primary negative emotion, and regret was the most frequently named negative emotion in a study of verbal expressions of emotions in everyday conversation. Generally, the term regret is used to describe the sense of sorrow or disappointment over something done or not done. Thus, it is important to understand the conditions under which switching versus repeating-purchase decisions result in greater regret. Samuelson and Zeckhauser (1988) defined the status quo effect as the tendency to maintain “one’s current or previous decision. Facing with new options, decisions makers often stick with the status quo alternative”. In other words, having made a decision, people tend to repeat it. The status quo effect suggests that a decision maker’s satisfaction with the outcome of a decision does not depend solely on that particular outcome and on how it compares to alternative outcomes. Rather, these evaluative reactions also depend on how the outcome is achieved. This study argues that pervious research on regret and the status quo effect has largely failed to consider that decisions are typically made in the context of prior experiences and outcomes and that these may have a considerable impact on the regret consumers experience in regard to current decision outcomes. This study discusses how the justifiability of decision attenuates the regret that resulted from the purchasing-behaviors of consumers. This study hopes to achieve the following objectives: (1) to identify whether the status quo effect attenuates a consumer’s regret, (2) to manipulate the status quo effect in a consumer setting by providing information about a previous consumption experience, (3) to examine that prior-experience information serves as a reason for the subsequent decision whether would attenuate the status quo effect by the perceived justifiability of the decision, (4) to examine whether different types of negative experiences of consumers who have more time to make decisions would attenuate their regret, (5) to examine whether more negative experiences would let consumers induce counterfactual thinking easier than others. The samples for this study are consumers who had purchasing experiences of cell phone, computer, or restaurant respectively. This student sends out 2,500 copies of the questionnaires and receives 2,212 replies. There were 2,182valid replies. The response rate was 88.48%, and the valid response rate was 87.28%. This study has several conclusions as follows: 1.In the absence of prior information or when negative reinforcing prior information is available, a decision to repeat will be regretted more than a decision to switch. 2.A strong reason for a decision will result in lower subsequent regret. 3.Regret will be greater in both the negative- prior-experience/repeat and the positive-prior-experience/switch conditions than in the negative/switch and positive/repeat conditions. 4.Extensive experiencing history will decrease regret in the repeat condition (compared to low experiencing history) and increase it in the switching condition. 5.The status quo effect will be eliminated when there is a strong purchasing reason for the decision but will still be present when there is a weak purchasing reason. 6.The effect of reason and decision on subsequent regret will be mediated by the perceived justifiability of the decision. 7.The condition in the control experience will be more similar to that of the negative experience than to that of the positive experience. 8.If there is more time to make decision, the consumer would feel less regret. 9.The consumers who were in the absence of negative experiences would feel induce counterfactual thinking easily than others.