IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jconrs/doi10.1086-666471.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Kurt A. Carlson
  • Margaret G. Meloy
  • Elizabeth G. Miller

Abstract

How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumers to revert to the product aligned with the initially active goal upon seeing information that objectively favored neither product. The prevalence of the reversion (i.e., flip-flop) preference pattern suggests that activation of a set-aside goal escalates when it is set aside, much as if its pursuit had been impeded by an external force. In addition to revealing goal reversion in a variety of choice contexts, the studies in this article also find that goal reversion is moderated by goal conflict.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurt A. Carlson & Margaret G. Meloy & Elizabeth G. Miller, 2013. "Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 39(5), pages 918-930.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/666471
    DOI: 10.1086/666471
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/666471
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/666471
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/666471?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kim, Seeun & Baek, Tae Hyun & Yoon, Sukki, 2020. "The effect of 360-degree rotatable product images on purchase intention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    2. Rebecca Hamilton & Debora Thompson & Zachary Arens & Simon Blanchard & Gerald Häubl & P. Kannan & Uzma Khan & Donald Lehmann & Margaret Meloy & Neal Roese & Manoj Thomas, 2014. "Consumer substitution decisions: an integrative framework," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 305-317, September.
    3. Xie, Yi (Fionna) & Mandel, Naomi & Gardner, Meryl P., 2021. "Not all dieters are the same: Development of the Diet Balancing Scale," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 143-157.
    4. Long, James H. & Basoglu, K. Asli, 2016. "The impact of task interruption on tax accountants' professional judgment," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 96-113.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/666471. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jcr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.