Exploring the Boundary Conditions of the Power Distance Belief on DIY Preference: An Abstract

The do-it-yourself (DIY) market is increasing. The most recent pandemic has seen people all over the world spend more time at home and more money in DIY home makeover. Though DIY is a lucrative market, there have been significant differences in DIY spending across countries. Recent literature suggests a negative relationship between power distance belief (PDB) and do-it-yourself (DIY) (Paharia & Swaminathan, 2019; Song, Jung, & Zhang, 2021). Yet it is not clear when such effect can be changed. The authors propose that the negative PDB effect on DIY preference arises because of customers’ attitude towards customer power. Customers generally believe they have a more powerful position than service providers in the market exchange based on the customer orientation marketing practice (Hutt, 1936; Labrecque et al., 2013; Yim et al., 2012). Accordingly, customers with high PDB think their powerful positions as customers are not respected and tend to dislike DIY activities. In contrast, customers with low PDB value equality and thus may show a strong preference for DIY. Based on this systematic difference in power focus, we identify the boundary conditions for the negative effect of PDB on DIY. Across three studies, we show that the negative PDB on DIY effect for high PDB can be attenuated or reversed. Such effect can be mitigated when high PDB consumers are status focused instead of power focused and are in a low power state. Such effect can be reversed when high PDB consumers are induced with a deal-seeking motivation while low PDB consumers are induced with hedonic seeking motivation. In addition, we discover the novel process of consumers’ attitude towards consumer power as the underlying process for such an intricate relationship between PDB and DIY. This research makes several contributions to the literature. First, we expand research on DIY by incorporating novel moderators into a theoretical framework to profoundly examine the impact of PDB on DIY preference. Second, this research enriches our understanding of the complexity of how PDB affects consumer responses differently. We contribute to this line of literature by highlighting its novel effect in DIY preference. We show PDB’s effect on DIY is operating through the process of consumers’ attitude toward customer powers. The finding from this research also provides better understanding on cultural influences for marketing professionals.