Goal-Directed Consumption

The process of consumption can be goal directed or experiential, according to Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novack. Goal-directed consumption is motivated by extrinsic concerns such as the utilitarian value of an object or the need to fulfill a specific extrinsic goal. Goal-directed consumption is typically planned and directed. Overall, goal-directed consumption is slow, conscious, effortful, highly modifiable, and largely effect free. Experiential consumption, in contrast, is motivated by intrinsic concerns such as the immediate hedonic benefit or the need to complete a ritualized behavior. Overall, experiential consumption is fast, automatic, effortless, more difficult to modify, and intimately bound up with emotional processing.

It remains uncertain which system is more important in deciding consumer behavior and how the two systems might relate and interact. Clearly, people can and do make deliberative, reasoned choices. Large purchase decisions, such as the purchase of a new television, usually involve actively weighing the pros and cons of each television and pitting them side by side until a winner emerges. At the same time, however, people can and do judge experientially; one television may simply feel more right, while a seemingly good television can be rejected because it feels wrong. It is obviously difficult to decide if any single judgment is “correct;” large purchases are made infrequently, and there is rarely the opportunity to try out alternatives under replicable conditions.

Over the past forty years, there has been an increasing emphasis on experiential factors predicting economic decisions. Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson, for example, set up a stall in a busy shopping [Page 683]center with four identical pairs of socks placed in a row. Shoppers were asked to examine the socks and state which they thought was the best quality. They discovered a strong position effect such that the socks placed to the right were proclaimed as the best four times as often as the socks placed to the left. But all the socks were identical. When asked to explain their choice, the shoppers pointed to the better feel and quality of the socks on the right or announced a preference for the color. Nobody mentioned position as having an influence.

When making choices, consumers may not deliberate and balance all the available information. Sometimes they may not even “see” the information that is available and will make an intuitive decision based on information they are not even aware of. None of this is perhaps that surprising. Much of what human beings do is hidden from direct introspection. Tossing a ball up into the air and catching it, for example, involves performing multiple differential equations that you will never be aware of. Reaching out to grab a glass involves accelerating your hand, opening your hand sufficiently to grab the glass, decelerating your hand (so you don't knock the glass over), gripping the glass (sufficiently to hold it firmly without shattering it), accelerating the glass from its resting place toward your mouth, and then decelerating it so that you may drink from it (and not spill it down your front). Although you will do all that to drink, you will barely be aware of any of it, and that is a good thing. If every action were driven by conscious agency, then we would be overwhelmed by the effort of trying to control all the relevant parameters with the requisite precision. Automaticity is necessary to allow coherent, goal-directed behavior and coherent percepts.

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