School of Business

Seeking consistency between planning orientation and situational purchase mindset

Nancy Spears, University of North Texas
Clinton Amos, Weber State University
Atefeh Yazdanparast, University of Evansville

Abstract

The research applies consistency theory to investigate how planning orientation, planner, or reactor combines with situational purchase mindsets. The results of three studies reveal that (i) consistency between planning orientation and situational mindset fosters more action responses in terms of number of stores one intends to visit or actually visited; (ii) when inconsistency is experienced, action responses are fewer because the consumer seeks to resolve inconsistencies by consulting others to help build consensus toward one emerging purchase decision alternative; (iii) the findings depend upon whether the purchase context is hedonic or utilitarian for the planner but not for the reactor and (iv) the impulsive scenario reverses the predictions of consistency theory.