The effects of consumers’ regulatory focus on the relationship between visiting intention and VMD benefits

The purpose of our research was to understand the effect of consumers’ regulatory focus (i.e., promotion focused vs. prevention focused) on their evaluation of clothing store’s VMD and store visiting intention. The results showed that the hedonic and utilitarian benefits of store VMD have significantly a positive impact on visiting intentions. In addition, the relationship between perceived hedonic benefits and store visiting intention was significantly different for PO and PE groups; hedonic benefits explained significantly more of the variance in store visiting intention for promotion-focused group than prevention-focused group. Conversely, utilitarian benefits explained significantly more of the variance in store visiting intention for PE than PO group. These results supported both hypotheses and showed that consumers with a promotion focus have stronger visiting intention toward the VMD with hedonic benefits compared with VMD with utilitarian benefits. Conversely, consumers with a prevention focus have stronger visiting intention toward the VMD with utilitarian benefits compared with VMD with hedonic benefits.