Abstract:

Consumers often pursue contradicted goals in one decision, rendering the decision into an ambivalent one. This is especially true for unplanned purchase decisions. Recognizing the dynamic nature of consumer decisions, we explore whether and how consumers’ past regret influences their decision-making in present. Through a pretest and two empirical studies, we find that consumers’ action regret on past purchase experience may decrease their present intention to purchase when unplanned desire occurs, whereas inaction regret from past non-purchase may increase the present purchase. Based on the justification theory, we go deeper to explore the underlying mechanism. We argue and find that past action vs. inaction regret experience entail consumers to pay attention to the gain vs. loss inherent in the present purchase, and then this differentiated emphasis in return affect their present purchase decision-making. Besides, the effect of action/inaction regret may vary with consumers’ regulatory focus.

Key words: Unplanned Purchase, Past Memory, Regret, Purchase Justification, Self-regulation