The more you buy, the more you enjoy? The effects of expertise and regulatory focus on hedonic escalation

Abstract

noneThis research conducted three experiments to examine the effects of expertise and the regulatory focus on hedonic escalation. By doing this research, we explore which kind of people experience hedonic escalation. To achieve customer retention and make customers even happier when they buy more, leads to increased revenue of a brand company; this is an important issue. In study1, we found that consumers had hedonic escalation when consuming cosmetic products. Furthermore, based on different consumer knowledge level, expertise consumers had lower hedonic escalation than novice consumers. In study 2, we added regulatory focus personalities as a moderator to test consumers’ hedonic escalation when consuming cosmetic products with different level of consumer knowledge. In study 3, we did the same experiment as study 2 but changed the targeted products from cosmetic products to potato chips and aesthetic shoes. We found the same results as study 2.