Self Regulation on Innovative Products Choice

This chapter explores how choice goals influence consumers’ innovativeness in a product category domain. The intentions to adopt new products are guided by promotion and prevention self-regulation systems. Thus, two of the choice goals were classified as promotion goals—justifiability and choice confidence—and two were classified as prevention goals – anticipated regret and evaluation costs. Two groups emerged from the analysis: one named “most innovative” and another called “less innovative.” When comparing the groups, the results show that the “most innovative” cluster demonstrated higher choice confidence, higher justifiability and was more capable of avoiding a possible choice regret. The differences found in the group analysis highlight the need of understanding in further detail how consumers behave during the choice process of innovative products. Therefore, the Regulatory Focus Theory has been shown to be very important for understanding the choice process, especially for the innovation adoption.