Easy One First Or Difficult One First?Research On The Consumer Task Start Choosing Based On The Regulatory Mode Theory

As the saying goes,"well begun is half done",but people often struggle with whether to start to do something in their plan of daily life.At the same time,in academia,review of the literature,we found the research of goal pursuiting is plenty,mainly from the perspective of goal pursuit stages.Early researchers typically drew a distinction between two stages of goal pursuit:motivation(goal setting,strategizing,and planning)and volition(action orientation and implementation),and argued that as people approach a goal over space and time,they switch from a motivational stage to a volitional stage.But what does decide the shift from a motivation stage to a volition stage?There goes a silence with a little voice.The research of the factors which influence consumers' goal pursuit shitting from planning stage to the action is very scarce,and only a handful of studies shows what factors affect the goal pursuit shift from motivation to action phase,such as Yanping Tu and Dilip Soman(2014)argues that the classification of task deadline time will promote the transfer.However,the exploration of the influence factors is helpful for us to better understand and predict the behavior intention of consumers.So if there are any other factors will affect the transfer?In present study,we maintain that the categorization of tasks by difficulty will be another vital factor that promote the transfer of goal pursuiting.In previous studies of task difficulty,the researchers see the task difficulty as a metacognitive emotion,and work their research from two specific areas as the negative impact of task difficulty and the influential factors of task difficulty.Although metacognitive experiences are not intense emotions,they are considered feelings because they have an experiential component.For example,the term"feeling" has been used to describe metacognitive experiences such as "feeling of knowing"and "feeling of familiarity".It is in this spirit that we use the term "feeling of difficulty" or "sense of difficulty" to describe the focal construct in this article.To illustrate with examples,pronouncing a complex string of letters(e.g.,meunstah)feels more difficult than pronouncing a simple word.Solving complex arithmetic problems feels more difficult,and this feeling can influence magnitude judgments.A complex choice feels difficult and thus reduces choice confidence.However,the research of the positive impact of task difficulty especially towards goal pursuit shifting is very scarce.For example,when faced with difficult and easy tasks,to start difficult one or to start easy one first?Maybe different people have different answers.Some people may choose difficult one first,while others easy one first.But why?Therefore,based on the regulatory mode theory,this paper puts forward that the task difficulty classification is one of the factors that affect consumers' goal pursuit shitting.By three groups of experiments,this paper discusses the effect of task difficulty classification on task start choosing and the moderating effect of external rewards.As the conclusions followed:(1)Locomotion oriented people are more focused on the task schedule,and more likely to choose start easy task.While assessment oriented people pay more attention to the value of the task,and more likely to choose start difficult task.(2)When offering a process reward,both locomotion oriented people and assessment oriented people tend to choose easy task.And when giving a ability reward,whether locomotion oriented people or assessment oriented people both tend to choose a difficult task.This paper extends the goal pursuit research,and enrich the application of regulatory mode theory in the field of marketing.