Moderating Role of Hope on the Marketing Practices–Self- Regulatory Outcomes Relationship
Many consumers are beset by problems of self-regulation as evidenced by overeating, compulsive shopping, gambling, drug use, smoking, and alcoholism. In many cases, problems exist despite consumers’ rational knowledge that their consumption means forgoing a larger and more important long-term goal. Hoch and Lowenstein (1991) call these “time-inconsistent preferences,” because the immediate behavior that consumers want to engage in is inconsistent with the longer-term goal they would like to achieve. Timeinconsistent preferences occur when the desire for a given behavior (e.g., eating, drinking, smoking) is greater than the consumer’s willpower to forgo the behavior in light of a larger goal (e.g., weight loss, sobriety, nicotine-free living). Recent research has verified that desire and willpower are indeed related to time-inconsistent preferences, at least in the domain of economic spending (Karlsson 2003).