The Effects of Reward Card Types and Regulatory Focus on Transaction Coupling and Sunk Cost Perception

적립카드 유형과 조절적 초점이 소비자의 거래커플링과 매몰비용 지각에 미치는 효과

Since American Airlines's mileage program emerged in market, loyalty programs have gained popularity. Many companies have generated many kinds of reward cards in order to induce precious consumers. As a result, reward cards are very important in consumer goods market and become diversified. In spite of its importance, little is known about how these cards influence consumer's perception. The prior research has not focused on reward card types and psychological variables. Accordingly this research intends to investigate psychological variables such as transaction coupling and sunk cost perception. According to the theory of regulatory focus, promotion focus consumers would point to gain-nongain frame work, but prevention focus consumers would point to loss-nonloss frame work. The paper proved the effect of reward card types and regulatory focus on transaction coupling and sunk cost perception. Based on the results from 2(type of card : visible vs invisible) ${\times}$ 2(regulatory focus: promotion vs prevention) between-subjects factorial design experiments, we found that consumer's transaction coupling and sunk cost perception of visible reward card are better recognized than invisible reward card. In addition, the results show that there is a significant interaction effect between the type of reward card and regulatory focus. Specifically promotion focused consumers tend to reveal better perception than prevention focused consumers in use of invisible cards. However, prevention focused consumers tend to show better perception than promotion focused consumers in use of visible cards. These findings will contribute to significant academic development and practically useful help to marketing managers.