Two essays on the impact of goals on consumer behavior.

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This dissertation includes two essays on the impact of goals on consumer behavior. The first essay investigates the moderating role of regulatory focus in resolving product choice involving conflicting goals. Specifically, the results of four experiments demonstrate that when both a high-level and a low-level consumer goal are active, but cannot be satisfied by a single product, consumers with a promotion focus are more likely to choose a product that satisfies the high-level goal whereas consumers with a prevention focus are more likely to choose a product that satisfies the low-level goal. These experiments also find that these effects occur because the promotion focus and the prevention focus has different effects on the accessibility of the high-level and low-level goals, and the accessibility of goals, in turn mediates the effects on conflicting product choice.The results of five experiments show that (1) the brand-as-means is different from other brands that are perceived to be equally capable of satisfying this goal. Specifically, when the goal is activated, both its cognitive properties (e.g., activation) and its motivational properties (e.g., wanting and specific affective experience) get transferred to the brand-as-means, but not to other brands (experiment 1 to 3), and (2) when the goal is activated, the brand-as-means is more likely to be selected over other brands (experiment 4 and 5).The second essay examines situations in which there are multiple brands in a product category that consumers perceive as equally capable of satisfying an active goal. Based on the recent goal system theory in social psychology (Kruglanski et al. 2002), we propose the concept of brand-as-means and demonstrate how it differs from other brands. We conceptualize brand-as-means as a consumer's idiosyncratic way to achieve their personal goal. Others may use other brands to achieve the same goal, but these brands could vary by consumer. We further propose that the brand-as-means is a part of a consumer's goal system, whereas other brands are exclusively represented in the consumer' knowledge structure.

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