To go or to let it go: A regulatory focus perspective on Bundle Consumption

Abstract

Despite the widespread reliance on service bundles across industries (examples include theater season-tickets, vacation packages, and annual sports passes), the impact of consumer-specific factors on the post-purchase consumptions of such bundles has received limited academic attention. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, we show that a consumer’s regulatory orientation influences the consumption of service bundles, and that the impacts are mediated by construal level. Using six studies (including a field study and a quasi-field experiment using Twitter data) we illustrate that prevention-focused individuals demonstrate concrete construal and are better able to resolve the ambiguity in allocating costs and benefits to individual bundle components, leading to higher consumption. By examining the role of a consumer’s regulatory orientation, our work advances the theoretical understanding of consumer behavior in response to the bundling of services. We make an important methodological contribution by demonstrating how text-mining can be innovatively utilized to analyze consumer posts on Twitter to infer regulatory focus and understand service bundle consumption. Our studies provide practical guidance to managers seeking to infer (using publicly available Twitter data and consumer-provided inputs during purchase) and prime (using advertisements and nudges) regulatory focus to understand/influence service consumption.