The Effect of Consumers' Should-expectation and Will-expectation on Consumer Satisfaction: Focusing on Regulatory Focus

It is widely known that consumer satisfaction, as well as consumer voice and loyalty, affect firms' performance. Prior studies on consumer satisfaction have focused on expectancy disconfirmation theory and its effects on satisfaction related to disconfirmation with consumer expectation and with perceived performance. This study classified consumer expectation into should-expectation and will-expectation, and investigated how disconfirmation with these expectations affects consumer satisfaction differently based on regulatory focus. Specifically, for promotion-focused consumers, disconfirmation of will-expectation has a more significant influence on consumer satisfaction than that of should-expectation. For prevention-focused consumers, disconfirmation of should-expectation has a more significant influence on consumer satisfaction. The results of this study provide academic insights that not only generic expectation (will-expectation) but also should-expectation play an important role in determining consumer satisfaction according to regulatory focus. In addition, it is expected that the findings can be used as a guide to manage consumer expectation in practice.