| Personal control refers to person's belief that he or she is capable of obtaining desired outcomes,avoiding undesired outcomes,and achieving goals,which is a fundamental human need.However,consumers often face the situations in which their personal control are threatened.Accordingly,numerous researches focus on how control-deprived individuals may resort to different coping strategies to restore personal control.According to the control compensation theory,individuals may engage in self-regulation efforts to restore personal control.Based on the prior research of consumer behavior,control-deprived individuals mainly compensate for lowered perceived control by two coping strategies.First,control-deprived individuals may show general structure-seeking tendencies,which related to preference for external environment that brings sense of order.Experiencing a loss of personal control leads people to seek reassurances that the world is still predictable.Such reassurance might come from products.Second,individuals may indirectly resolve deficits in personal control via bolster personal agency by specific products.For example,low control individuals prefer leading brands,high-effort products and utilitarian products.These products act as an empower instrument which can enhance personal agency beliefs.To sum up,these findings are discussing how the characteristics of the products or brands,that is,the result of consumption,to help consumers restore control.However,the process of consumption is increasingly important in consumption activities.And consumers are willing to participate in the creation,design and production of products,which gives consumers the ability to make choices and decisions.It enables consumers to experience the causal relationship between behaviors and results,thus promote their belief in cause and effect.These are closely related to consumers' sense of control.This research investigates whether a loss of perceived control leads to greater preference for participation in the consumption process.In this research,we propose that a perceived loss of control leads consumers to show a greater preference for participation in experiential creation to reinstate their sense of control.Through 5 studies,the present research investigates how and when personal control might affect consumers'attention to participate in experiential creation.First,we test the effect of control deprivation on experiential creation consumprion.In study 1,we use the data from the sixth wave of a World Value Survey,which is widely used in social science research,to investigate the relationship between control deprivation and creation intention.And the result demonstrates that lower level of personal control is associated with higher creation intention,which provides the preliminary evidence in support of our core effect.Study 2 uses experimental settings to test causal relationship between perceived control and willingness to take part in experiential creation consumption.We manipulate personal control and then aske participants to choose between two options—one for handmade chocolates(experiential creation product)and one for store-bought chocolates(product that does not involve experiential creation).The results also support the main hypothesis.Then,we examine that perceived autonomy as a mediator of control on consumption intention of experiential creation.Compared to final products,such experiential creation products enable individuals to feel as if they have the autonomy to pursue the desired outcomes which in turn compensate consumers for their sense of control.Thus,low-control individuals more likely to engage in experiential creation consumption.We conduct two experiments to test the meaidation effect and rule out other explanations.In study 3,we use reading material to manipulate personal control and than test participants'purchase intention of experiential creation products.To further clarify the mechanism of mediation,we conduct study 4 by operationalizing the same product as either high or low in experiential creation qualities.The result shows that in the high experiential creation condition,control deprivation promotes participants'purchase intention.In contrast,in the low experiential creation condition,there is no significant interactive effect of control deprivation and purchase intention.And perceived autonomy plays a mediating role.Finally,we identify constrains as an important moderation variable which affects perceived autonomy in experiential creation,thus moderates the effect of control on consumption intention of experiential creation.In study 5,we manipulate the level of constrain in the process of experiential creation consumption.The result shows high level of constrain(e.g.,when instructions are provided and a target outcome is dictated)thwarts consumers'perceived autonomy and then undermine feelings of personal control in the experiential creation consumption.The mediating effect of perceived autonomy is further examined in this study.In summary,experiencing a loss of control promotes consumers to restore their sense of control through experiential creation consumption.The effect is mediated by consumers' perceived autonomy and moderated by level of constrains.These findings are important in part because they offer both theory contributions and practical implications.Theoretically,current research broadens the literature on compensatory control theory.Past research has focused on how products,brands and characteristics of consumption environment help people restore feelings of personal control in the marketing context.Here,we discuss participation in consumption process may enhance personal control.Importantly,the research has important implications for the area of autonomy and self-determination theory.Much of this prior research points to tendency of seeking order and personal agency as the underlying reason of compensation behaviors.Our findings show that perceived autonomy as a mediating role between personal control and experiential creation consumption,which greatly extend the application of self-determination theory.Finally,this research has important implications for the area of experiential creation consumption.Unlike previous research in this area and within the sphere of experiential creation consumption,which has largely been studied from the view of motivation,for example,social comparison,learning,competence,and autonomy,etc.We provide a unique insight to understand the reason why consumers tend to evolve in experiential creation consumption,which promotes understanding of this area.In practice,the result has important implications for companies and consumers.For companies,our findings are instructive for experiential creation products.For instance,they could identify consumers with low sense of control according to contexts such as a certain region.For consumers,these findings are of great significance to restore their sense of control.The present research thus reveals that consumers compensate for a loss of perceived control by enhancing perceived autonomy and engaging in experiential creation consumption.In line with this research,companies,social organizations,and governments could help restore consumers' personal control by increasing their autonomy and experiential creation. |
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