Beauty in the eyes of its beholders: Effects of design novelty on consumer preference

In this research, we propose that promotion- (vs. prevention-) focused consumers should prefer a novel product design, an effect that we attribute to increased processing fluency. In addition, we propose that the effect of consumers’ regulatory focus should be moderated by product type, such that promotion- (prevention-) focused consumers should prefer more (less) novel designs only for utilitarian products; for hedonic products all consumers should prefer a novel design regardless of their regulatory foci. We obtain empirical evidence for these predictions across four experiments that use different operationalizations of regulatory focus and product type. We conclude by discussing the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of our research.