סמינר בשיווק
The influence of time‐interval descriptions on goal pursuit decisions
Nira Munichor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
30 באפריל 2013, 14:00
בניין רקנאטי ,חדר 403
Goal pursuit is a popular topic in the field of consumer psychology. However, little research has
investigated the effect of goal description on a consumer’s decision to pursue that goal. The current
research attempts to bridge this gap by focusing on the effects of the description of the time interval
allowed for goal completion. We suggest and show that people are sensitive to seemingly
unimportant nuances in interval descriptions, and that they are more likely to pursue most goals
when the completion interval is described in terms of extents (units of time, e.g., “in two months”)
than when it is described in terms of dates (e.g., “between today and June 23”). We put forward
people's time focus as the psychological mechanism that accounts for the increased goal pursuit that
follows extent‐based interval descriptions: We show that extent and date descriptions affect how
people focus on future time intervals, causing people to differentially focus on the distant versus near
future. Our data further suggest goal type (i.e., whether the goal is beneficial in the short or the long
term) and interval length as moderators of the effect. Our findings may carry important implications
for the design of marketing communications, contribute to consumers’ wellbeing by making them
more aware of the non‐trivial influences that small changes in goal description may exert on their
behavior, and add to a growing body of work on numerosity and consumer behavior
