The Influence Of Action–state Orientation On Inaction Inertia

Promotional activities have always been an important means for enterprises to enhance brand awareness,occupy more market share and encourage product purchase.However,in the real market situation,the missing of one buying opportunity would reduce the possibility of buying the product in the following situation.Due to missing out on previous more attractive opportunities,Inaction inertia makes people unwilling to take action even the presented opportunity still with an attractive,which is a common consumer decision-making bias.One of the determinants is the inability to overcome the negative feeling of missing out on a more attractive opportunity.Present research at domestic and foreign mostly studies the inertia effect of inaction from the perspective of mechanism,but rarely explores the methods of optimizing enterprise promotion which based on personality traits and actual consumption decision-making situations,and explores the similarities and differences of consumption decision-making of individuals with different personality traits in actual consumption situations.Inertia inaction has significant differences among individuals with different action control orientations.Action control orientations can be divided into action orientation and state orientation.Previous studies have shown that individual differences of different action control orientations in dealing with challenging situations,work and even health have been confirmed by studies.The difference is that action-oriented individuals can quickly overcome negative events,focus instead on improving the situation and make decisions effortlessly.In contrast,state-oriented individuals tend to dwell on negative events,feel sad about them for a long time,and have difficulty making decisions about the next step.On this basis,the influence of action control orientation on inaction inertia(a kind of decision avoidance behavior)was investigated.We hypothesized that cognitive focus could explain the difference in the inertia effect of inaction among different control oriented individuals.In other words,when state-oriented individuals focus more on loss(the relationship between the current opportunity and missed opportunity)than gain(the relationship between the initial state and the current opportunity),they are more likely to show inertia inaction.Experiment 1 confirmed the study’s prediction by using a questionnaire,status-oriented people showed greater inertia of inaction than action-oriented people.However,anticipated inaction regret,Anticipated action regret and evaluation as important indicator of inaction inertia,individuals with different action control orientation have no significant difference in these aspects,both action oriented and state oriented individuals will have the feeling of regret for missed better opportunities.However,individuals with different action control orientation have different cognitive focus points.Experiments show that action-oriented individuals are more inclined to pay attention to gains rather than losses.Experiment 2 used eye-tracking technique to investigate whether cognitive focus could explain inaction inertia.The results of eye movement experiment showed that action orientation paid more attention to the original price,while state-oriented individuals paid more attention to the activity price.This difference in cognitive focus explained the difference in action control orientation in inaction inertia.In Experiment 3,we manipulated individuals’ cognitive focus to demonstrate the mediating effect of cognitive focus.When individuals were guided to pay attention to the difference between the current price and the original price,the inaction inertia was reduced.However,when the individual is guided to pay attention to the difference between the current price and the missed price,the inertia of individual inaction increases.The conclusion shows that:(1)Compared with action oriented individuals,state orientation individuals are more likely to produce inertia inaction after missing a preferential activity.This difference is not caused by regret,but by different cognitive focus,which means status-oriented individuals pay more attention to the comparison between the current price and the missed price.(2)When the missed preferential price is greatly different from the current price,both action-oriented individuals and state orientation individuals will produce inertia of inaction.Under any price condition,action-oriented people tend to be more inclined to purchase the product.(3)Both action orientation and state orientation show less inertia inaction when they focus on gains than when they focus on losses.This study aims to reveal the reasons for the differences in the inertia of inaction among individuals with different action control orientation,enrich the relevant research on the inertia of inaction,and provide reference and suggestions for consumers to make rational decisions and marketers to develop relevant marketing strategies from the perspective of psychology.