Regulatory Focus and Smart Phone Switching Behavior: the Role of Quality Type

This paper tests empirically the effect of regulatory focus on switching behavior by smart phone quality types. We designed an experiment to examine the interaction effect of smart phone quality type (system quality vs. service quality) and goal orientation (promotion focus vs. prevention focus) on switching decision behavior. In the system or functional quality disappointment situation, the promotion-focused users tend to switch their smart phone platform more than the prevention-focused users. In contrast, in the service quality disappointment situation, the prevention-focused users show higher possibility to switch their platform than the promotion-focused users.