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Executive Summary
This article explores how consumers' self-regulation affects the likelihood of purchase of new and really new products. A mall intercept field study (Study 1) shows that consumers with a chronic promotion-focused disposition own more new high-technology goods and newly launched repeat-purchase items than prevention-focused consumers. There is no difference in ownership of products that have been available for many years. Two laboratory experiments further investigate these findings. In Study 2, the authors manipulate regulatory focus and find that when risks associated with a really new product are not specified to consumers, promotion-focused consumers state higher purchase intentions than prevention-focused consumers. However, when the judgmental context makes the risks salient, prevention- and promotion-focused participants are equally unlikely to purchase the product. Study 3 demonstrates that consumers' self-regulation is unrelated to purchase intentions for products that are not portrayed as new. Mediation analyses in both laboratory studies show that the effect of regulatory focus on purchase intentions for new products is due to concerns with the performance of the new technology, which are more pronounced among prevention-focused consumers.

The findings imply that regulatory focus may be an effective marketing and segmentation tool in new product promotion. Because regulatory focus may be induced, marketers can frame communications to encourage promotion focus and shift consumers' focus toward positive outcomes, which may favorably affect evaluations and purchase likelihood. Manufacturers of established products could stress uncertainty regarding new products to slow adoption of new competitors.

The application of regulatory focus to new product promotion may be particularly appealing to managers because of implementation ease. Products' life cycles are diminishing, innovations are expensive to develop, and it may be difficult to target consumers who are likely to be innovators. The results of these studies suggest that in lieu of such targeting, advertising can facilitate consumers' receptiveness to innovation.

Biography
Michal Herzenstein is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware. She received her MS in Applied Economics and her PhD in Marketing from the University of Rochester. She also holds a bachelor's degree in Economics, Statistics, and Operations Research and an MBA from Tel Aviv University, Israel. Her research interests are in the areas of decision making, new products, existential marketing, selective hypothesis testing, and consumer reactions to direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

Steven S. Posavac is Associate Dean for MBA Programs and Associate Professor of Marketing in the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. He has a BA from Knox College in Psychology and an MS and a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Utah. His research interests include consumer judgment and decision processes, the role of attitudes in consumer choice, the perceived value of goods and services, and media effects on female consumers. His work has appeared in various marketing and psychology journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Marketing Letters, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Journal of Economic Psychology. Steve either serves or has served on the editorial review boards of Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Economic Psychology. He has taught advertising and sales promotion, as well as marketing research, and has been named to the Simon School Teaching Honor Roll several times.

J. Joško Brakus is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester. J.J. holds a B.S. from the University of Zagreb and an MS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in Civil Engineering. He received a doctoral degree in Marketing from Columbia University. His research interests are in the areas of consumer and managerial information processing, judgment, and decision making. His research has appeared in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.