Assessing regulatory focus on the effectiveness of selling cues on purchase intentions

Abstract

Purpose: This study provides insights to retail marketers on the appropriate application of selling cues to induce higher purchase intentions. This study makes three important contributions, namely: 1. Measures the effectiveness of popularity and scarcity cues to induce higher purchase intentions; 2. Investigates whether shoppers’ chronic regulatory focus influences the effectiveness of popularity and scarcity cues to induce higher purchase intentions; and 3. Measures the manipulation effectiveness of popularity and scarcity cues.

Design/methodology/approach: This study took a positivist approach. To test the hypotheses, quantitative data was collected via an experiment field survey from three local supermarkets.

Findings: This study answered successfully the three research questions namely: 1. Selling cues are strong predictors of purchase intentions. The popularity cue induced significantly higher purchase intentions than the scarcity cue. 2. Regulatory focus has negligible impact on the relationship between selling cues and purchase intentions. 3. The toothpaste with the popularity cue produced low perceived risk, whilst the toothpaste with the scarcity cue was not perceived as unique. Research limitations: Since the results indicate that RF has negligible impact between selling cues and PIs, this study cannot investigate regulatory fit. Generalisability may be limited because this study focused only on one product. Therefore, the extent to which these findings may be applicable to other product categories is unknown. Likewise, generalising the research findings to other countries is not appropriate due to cultural differences.

Practical implications: The insights generated from this study aid organisations to utilise the most effective selling cues thereby increasing message persuasion, inducing higher PIs, and consequently benefitting from higher top line.

Originality and Value: This is the first study that used planograms to evaluate the effectiveness of selling cues. Furthermore, in the local retail market, this is the only study so far that investigates whether shoppers’ chronic regulatory focus influences the effectiveness of popularity and scarcity cues to induce higher purchase intentions.