Goal Setting and Goal Striving in Consumer Behavior.

Article from: Journal of Marketing | December 1, 1999 | Bagozzi, Richard P.; Dholakia, Utpal | Copyright Goals play an essential role in the purposive behavior of consumers, but scholars only recently have begun to examine the motivation for goals, their selection and modification, and their pursuit and attainment. One purpose of this article is to outline a conceptual framework for thinking about how goals emerge, influence decision making, and guide consumer choice and action. Another purpose is to integrate classic ideas proposed by consumer researchers with emerging concepts and models proposed by cognitive psychologists, social psychologists, and other social scientists. Finally, the authors' aim is to present several new ideas on goal setting and goal striving and point out how they can enrich the study and practice of consumer behavior. Much of consumer behavior is goal-directed. This can be found in the marketing of durables (e.g., buying a computer for the purpose of managing finances), nondurables (e.g., searching for a detergent that will be gentle, easy to use, and effective), services (e.g., joining a health club to keep body weight under control), and ideas or persons (e.g., deciding to vote for a candidate who will promote the voter's personal welfare). Even buyers in organizations pursue specific goals in their activities, such as when hospital pharmacy and therapeutics committees search for, choose, and prescribe drugs that will be safe, efficacious, and inexpensive. All these goals share a focus on a specific outcome (or outcomes) that consumption can produce. A desired outcome (e.g., ease of use) enters the mind of the decision maker and can be defined as a specific type of goal, namely, "a mental image or other end point representation associated with affect toward which action may be directed" (Pervin 1989, p. 474, emphasis added; see also Austin and Vancouver 1996 [*], p. 338). Consumers make purchases to produce or yield one or more end-state goals. Consumption goals are not limited to end states but also encompass experiences, sequences of interconnected happenings, and ongoing processes. For example, a person's vacation goal might not be limited to a particular location and time period per se but rather might reside in anticipated educational, recreational, and interpersonal experiences. A trip down the Amazon, an archeological excursion, or a religious pilgrimage all constitute experiential goals of one sort or another. Note, too, that goals need not be closed-ended (e.g., taking a white-water rafting trip next summer) but can be open-ended and loosely defined (e.g., maintaining a comfortable, longterm relationship with a bank). Despite the relevance and prevalence of goals in consumption, little scholarly research exists (cf. Bettman 1979; Howard and Sheth 1969 [*]; Huffman and Houston 1993; Lawson 1997; Ratneshwar, Pechmann, and Shocker 1996; Sjoberg, Bagozzi, and Ingvar 1998). We know little about what consumption goals are, how they are represented in memory, how they come about and change, or how they are pursued and achieved. We begin with an organizing model for goal concepts in consumption to provide a framework for thinking about current knowledge and what areas are in need of further research. Next, we examine research on how goals are chosen and represented. Then, we turn to an analysis of how goals, when chosen, are implemented. Although consumer researchers have begun to address goals, the contributions have been fragmented. We attempt to bring together this research and integrate new ideas on goal-directed behavior from work performed on human memory and the psychology of action. Finally, we close with examples and suggested research agendas. The Role of Goals in Consumption: An Organizing Model The formation of goal concepts and the enactment of purposive action in relation to goals take place complexly and at various stages in decision making and consumer behavior. Multiple mental activities and actions occur en route to goal achievement. To provide an organizing model for thinking about key research issues, we begin with the distinction between goal setting and

goal striving (e.g., Bagozzi 1992; Heckhausen and Gollwitzer 1987). In Figure 1, we summarize the stages characteristic of goal-directed decision making and goal pursuit for many consumption problems in this regard. We can conceive of goal-directed consumer behavior as beginning with goal setting. Goal setting involves decision-making processes in which, figuratively, the consumer addresses two broad questions: "What are the goals I can pursue, and why do I want or not want to pursue them?" As we demonstrate in the next section, goals are activated either externally, such as when the context presents opportunities or imposes imperatives, or internally, such as when the consumer constructs a goal schema or chooses from among self-generated alternatives. Given a sufficiently strong desire to pursue a goal, actual goal pursuit will commence in one of three conditions. Sometimes for frequently performed consumption activities goal pursuit is activated more or less automatically by responses to learned cues, and little conscious processing is involved (e.g., running a credit card through the scanner at the supermarket checkout counter). This might be labeled "habitual goal-directed consumer behavior." Habitual behavior must begin somewhere, of course. In general, its origins reside in prior deliberative processing or learning shaped by either classical or operant conditioning or in some combination of deliberative processing and conditioning. When acquired, however, habitual behavior is initiated and performed with little conscious self-regulation of the sort on which we focus herein. Another way that goal pursuit occurs, at least in a minimal way, is with impulsive acts. By definition, impulsive acts do not entail prior deliberation or planning, but they do involve some awakening of a need or desire that quickly becomes a goal to be achieved through minimal goaldirected activities. The final class of actual goal-pursuit activities, and the ones we emphasize in this article, are those that are clearly volitional in nature. As we show in Figure 1, goal pursuit is initiated volitionally with the formation of a goal intention, which answers the question, "What is it for which I strive?" Goal intentions are targeted at either specific acts as end performances (e.g., "I intend to buy a Sony DVD player tonight") or particular outcomes to be achieved through the execution of instrumental acts (e.g., "I intend to lose two pounds by exercising vigorously with my ProForm treadmill during the next week"). Goal intentions directed at end performances have been studied extensively in consumer behavior with the theory of reasoned action, in which they are termed "behavioral intentions" because the targets of the intentions are actions. Goal intentions directed at outcomes sometimes have been studied with the theory of reasoned action, but as the authors of that theory have emphasized, the theory is not applicable to outcome or end-state goals (Ajzen and Fishbein 1980, pp. 29-30, 111). The present framework is designed in part to apply to such decision-making contexts, as well as contexts in which actions are goals. Another type of volition that has not been studied systematically by consumer behavior researchers is the so-called implementation intention, which is a person's intention to perform a goal-directed behavior (e.g., execute an instrumental act) given that future contingencies occur: "I intend to do X when situation Y is encountered" (Gollwitzer 1996, p. 292). For example, an implementation intention to perform a future act in the service of goal achievement might read: "I intend to withdraw $60 from an automated teller machine (ATM) every time my cash on hand is $10 or less." An example of an implementation intention to achieve a future goal might read: "I intend to balance my portfolio of investments next year by adding new growth stocks in high-tech Asian industries as they become available." The third stage shown in Figure 1, action planning, is also volitional and elaborates further on implementation intentions. Here, focus is on the general question, "How can I achieve my goal?" and the specific amplifications addressing "when, where, how, and how long should I act in this regard?" (Gollwitzer 1996). The choice of means is an important part of planning (Bagozzi 1992). Following planning, actual implementation steps are taken in a fourth stage, labeled "action initiation and control" in Figure 1. Here, delayed intentions are enacted, and goal-directed behaviors are guided. Four questions are addressed: "Am I making progress toward my goal?"

"How well have I enacted my plans?" "Are there adjustments that need to be made?" and "Is the goal still important to me?" Implementation intentions are realized in this stage. The fifth stage, goal attainment/failure, involves a final comparison of the outcome achieved with a standard or reference value and determination of whether to maintain or increase efforts at goal pursuit or disengage from further efforts (e.g., Carver and Scheier 1996). Figuratively, the consumer asks: "To what degree have I achieved/failed to achieve my ends, and should I continue on with or terminate goal striving?" Finally, for feedback reactions, the discrepancy between a person's goal and its achievement is appraised, and emotional responses are generated, including reactions of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, among others. The question considered here is: "How do I feel about achieving/not achieving my goal?" Emotional and rational reactions to goal attainment/failure ultimately update the person's knowledge structure about goals, motivation to pursue goals, and other learning with regard to planning, means, and implementation (Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer 1999 [*]). We turn now to a detailed analysis of goal setting and goal striving. Goal Setting How do consumers form or arrive at their goals? How do they realize that they have a goal, and how are the motivational aspects of a goal represented in the mind or language of the consumer? Can consumers have goals and not be aware of them? We focus primarily on conscious aspects of goal setting and goal striving. But before we consider how goals arise in this sense, we acknowledge that goal-directed behaviors can occur unconsciously. Bargh's (1990) auto-motive model maintains that goals can be activated by environmental stimuli, and cognitive and behavioral processes operate to initiate and guide action automatically and unconsciously. This can be found in such habituated actions as driving a car, typing, or playing tennis and, perhaps, occurs in some routinized purchase situations. Bargh and Barndollar (1996) summarize experimental research that supports the automotive model (see also Wyer 1997 [*]). Conscious goals seem to arise in one of three ways. First, goals can be forced on people, through coercion or reward power or, more subtly, by virtue of their position in an organization, family, or other social unit, whereby they are obligated to work toward predefined ends. For example, the buyer in a firm must follow certain standards or procedures; the birth of a child opens new consumption imperatives for parents in the areas of special foods, medicine, and clothing. Second, people often simply "have" a goal, in the sense that it arises automatically because of biological, emotional, moral, or ethical forces (e.g., Le Doux 1996 [*]). These goals are nonconscious, but unlike Bargh's (1990) auto-motives, they are not necessarily produced by habitually learned responses to environmental stimuli. Rather, they are activated unconsciously by internal criteria but pursued consciously.