Approaching what we hope for and avoiding what we fear: A study of women’s concern with visible signs of skin aging

This paper proposes to examine how priming approach and avoidance goal orientations moderates consumer goal-directed preferences for products and services. These effects are studied in the context of women’s concern with visible signs of facial skin aging and the products, services and activities used to deal with it. Seven hundred female participants from Auckland were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions by receiving one of the two versions of a survey. The final sample was 203 (103 in the approach condition, 100 in the avoidance condition). MANOVA analyses indicated that women are likely to consider different means to deal with aging based on whether they are striving to prevent feared possible selves or to attain hoped-for selves. Underlying mechanisms, implications and future research directions are discussed.

► The current research provides insights into approach and avoidance self-regulation systems.
► It shows that these two types of self regulations can have a differential impact on consumption preferences and evaluations.
► The research also attempted to explain some of the asymmetric preferences revealed.