Abstract
Consumers pursue numerous goals that are linked to particular time frames. Might one's likelihood of agreeing to pursue a goal fluctuate even if nothing about the goal's objective features changes, but if instead the only change is in how the time allotted for goal pursuit is described? Seven experiments show that consumers are more likely to agree to pursue goals when the completion interval is described by duration (e.g., "within exactly two weeks from now") instead of date (e.g., "between today and November 17"). This pattern may arise because dates, which may make it easier to retrieve competing obligations falling within the interval, lead people to focus more on the (unenjoyable) goal-pursuit process, whereas durations, which present the interval in isolation, allow people to focus more on the goal's (beneficial) outcome. These findings suggest that although how a time interval is described seems inconsequential, it has striking effects on goal-pursuit decisions and therefore has important implications for the marketing of products and actions designed to assist consumers in achieving their goals.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 291-303 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Journal of Marketing Research |
Volume | 55 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018, American Marketing Association.
Funding
*Nira Munichor is Lecturer of Marketing, Graduate School of Business Administration, Bar-Ilan University (email: [email protected]). Robyn A. LeBoeuf is Associate Professor of Marketing, Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis (email: [email protected]). The authors want to thank Cynthia Cryder, Hengchen Dai, Rachel Gershon, Nathan Novem-sky, Scott Roeder, Brittney Stephenson, and Elanor Williams for their careful reading and thorough comments on previous versions of this manuscript. This work also greatly benefited from discussions with Ayelet Gneezy, Angela Lee, Nira Liberman, Wendy Liu, Steve Nowlis, and Yael Steinhart. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 227/13). Robert Meyer served as guest editor and Dilip Soman served as associate editor for this article.
Funders | Funder number |
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Israel Science Foundation | 227/13 |
Keywords
- Focus
- Framing
- Goal adoption
- Temporal description
- Time intervals