$100 a Month or $1,200 a Year? Regulatory Focus and the Evaluation of Temporally Framed Attributes

Journal of Consumer Psychology · 2021 · Volume 31 · Issue 2

Abstract

The costs and benefits of various products, such as insurance and subscription services, are recurring. Marketers can choose to frame these attributes either as a series of periodic occurrences (e.g., “$10 per month”) or aggregate them over a longer period (“$120 per year”). Five studies show that the effectiveness of such temporal framing depends on consumers’ salient regulatory goals. Compared with prevention-focused consumers, promotion-focused consumers are more likely to perceive benefits, costs, and losses to be larger when they are framed in aggregate (vs. periodic) terms. Mediation analyses suggest that, relative to prevention-focused consumers’ vigilant information processing style, promotion-focused consumers’ eagerness makes them more susceptible to temporal framing effects. The results suggest that regulatory goal is a consequential factor in determining the effectiveness of temporal framing.

Keywords

Numerosity heuristic, Regulatory focus, Temporal framing, Vigilance

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