My research examines how active consumption goals, defined as the benefits sought by the consumer, influence cognitive processes and decision outcomes. I address two common issues pertinent to consumer decisions. Consumers often face choices in which information is not readily available—requiring them to retrieve details from memory. Furthermore, consumer choices are frequently influenced by the type of attributes presented and the decision context itself, sometimes leading to negative outcomes and consequences. In two essays, I study how the activation of consumption goals can influence the manner in which decision-relevant information is encoded into memory, and may also influence the weighting of decision attributes and the outcomes of subsequent choices. The first essay explores the effects of goal activation and attribute valence on memory for information in a consumer decision setting. The second essay explores the factors that affect the helpfulness (or harmfulness) of consumption goal elicitation.

Goal setting theory has consistently found that high and specific goals lead to better performance than low and vague goals do. However, the independent effect of each of these two dimensions, difficulty and specificity, on performance is less clear. Although goal difficulty has been shown to affect performance level independent of goal specificity, evidence for an independent effect of goal specificity is mixed. In the current research, we introduce a moderator, regulatory focus, of the relationship between goal specificity and performance level. Specifically, we hypothesized that people in a promotion focus would be more motivated by aiming for wider goals that have a higher possibility of success and therefore fit an eager-approach strategy, while people in a prevention focus would be more motivated by aiming for narrower goals that have a small range of acceptable outcomes and therefore fit a vigilant-avoidance strategy. We examined this hypothesis with different hypothetical scenarios that manipulated goal width (wide versus narrow) with numerical ranges (Study 1) and visually with a bar graph (Study 2), and with different behavioural tasks that manipulated goal width in a saving strategies task (Study 3) and an anagram task (Study 4a, 4b). The findings revealed promising trends that were consistent with our hypothesis across all studies.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 1998. / Thesis advisor: Dr. Marc Goldstein. "...in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 28-31).

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 1998. / Title from document title page. "December, 1998" Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 129 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 71 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 24-31).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 30 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 20-23).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Duke University, 2008.

Thesis (B.A. (Hons.)) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

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