Towards Understanding the Interplay Between Culture and Goals

From deciding what dessert to order to choosing which airline to fly so that one can accrue more mileage points, consumer behavior is largely goal driven. Goals can be broadly dichotomized into attainment and maintenance goals: Whereas for attainment goals the actual state differs from the desired state (e.g., decrease one’s weight from 165 to 164 pounds), for maintenance goals the actual and the desired states match, and need to remain matched (e.g., keep one’s weight at 165 pounds or less). Although extant research examined how valuation of one’s labor (Brodscholl et al. 2007), satisfaction (Koo and Fishbach 2010), and perceived difficulty (Stamatogiannakis et al. 2010) differ between the two goal types, it is unclear under what circumstances consumers are more likely and more motivated to pursue each type of goal. It is also unknown whether and how consumers with different cultural background may behave differently towards the two goal types—an issue that impacts firms’ market segmentation and internationalization endeavors. The current research seeks to fill these gaps in the literature.