More or Less? Consumer Goal Orientation and Product Choice

We study the impact of consumers’ goal orientation on their preference between high-quality and low-priced products. Consistent with our theorizing, we find that US (Korean) consumers, who are more promotion (prevention) oriented, prefer high-quality (vs. low-priced) products because they assign more weight to quality in their choice. In addition, we identify a boundary condition of the effect by showing that it is mitigated for products for which safety is a salient feature. We also rule out price/quality perceptions, regret, and price-quality association as rival explanations of our results. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of the current research.