The relationship between regulatory focus and online shopping: perceived risk, affect, and consumers' response to online marketing.

Atorough, Peter; Donaldson, Bill

Abstract

Regulatory focus theory (RTF) has demonstrated that individuals can be distinguished on the basis of two independent structures of strategic inclination and orientation in the pursuit of goals: promotion focus - which emphasises the presence of positive outcomes while minimising errors of omission, versus prevention focus - which favours the absence of negative outcomes and minimising errors of commission. Yet no research, thus far, has explicitly considered the potential link between consumers' regulatory focus (RF), perceived risk, affect, and their response to online marketing (ROM) in the various dimensions of online shopping (OS). This paper fills this gap. By linking regulatory focus with online consumer shopping behaviour we empirically test a number of hypotheses to predict how consumers with different foci perceive risk on the internet, the consequence of this perception on their affect, and their overall response behaviour to online marketing. Our findings provide confirmatory evidence that RF is a powerful predictor of behaviour in OS.

Citation

ATOROUGH, P. and DONALDSON, B. 2012. The relationship between regulatory focus and online shopping: perceived risk, affect, and consumers' response to online marketing. International journal of internet marketing and advertising [online], 7(4), pages 333-358. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJIMA.2012.051615

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 31, 2012
• Online Publication Date: Dec 31, 2012
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2012
• Deposit Date: Sep 27, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 27, 2013
• Journal: International journal of internet marketing and advertising
• Print ISSN: 1477-5212
• Electronic ISSN: 1741-8100
• Publisher: Inderscience
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 333-358
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJIMA.2012.051615
• Keywords: Internet marketing; Online shopping; Perceived risk; Regulatory focus; RFT; Response to online marketing; ROM; E-commerce; Electronic commerce; Consumer response; Behaviour predictors
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/873