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The purpose of this paper is to test the combined influence of working towards self-concordant goals with goal planning and supervisory support on goal progress and job satisfaction.

The data were collected among prison guards. The analysis takes into account a multilevel perspective on goals by differentiating between within- and between-person variance.

The results showed that there was no direct effect of self-concordance on goal progress. Goal progress depended on combining self-concordant goals with conscious planning and receiving supervisory support. Furthermore, it was found that job satisfaction and goal progress influenced each other over time.

The findings confirm that to understand the influence of self-concordant goals within organizations, planning and supervisory support are essential elements for achieving goal progress. This research is the first to confirm the interrelatedness of goal progress and job-satisfaction over time.

The multilevel intra and interpersonal approach provides a more thorough insight into the processes involved with goal striving. It emphasizes the importance of differentiation between the different levels of motivation in Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory, especially when applied within the work context.

Drawing from both the transactional theory of stress and the conservation of resources theory, this paper sets out to investigate the role of demand-specific challenge and hindrance appraisal of emotional demands, as well as time pressure and perceived goal progress within the challenge–hindrance framework.

For this research, 91 employees provided daily diary data for one working week. Focusing on within-persons effects, multilevel moderated mediation models using multilevel path analyses were applied.

Both emotional demands and time pressure exert positive effects on work engagement when people expect resource gain (challenge appraisal), independent of actual resource gain (achievement). Furthermore, results show that goal progress buffers negative effects of perceived blocked resource gain (hindrance appraisal) on both emotional and motivational well-being.

This research proposes an extension and refinement of the challenge–hindrance stressor framework to explain health-impairing and motivational processes of emotional demands and time pressure, combining reasoning from both appraisal and resource theory perspectives. The study identifies demand-specific challenge and hindrance appraisals as mediators linking demands to emotional and motivational well-being, emphasizing the influence of goal progress as a resource on these relations.

This paper aims to examine the moderating role of customers’ regulatory focus on the relationship between progress level of goal pursuit and customers’ consumption behaviors in a retail setting.

Data were collected from a loyalty program organized by a retail store selling cosmetic and skincare products. Loyalty program participants were given member cards endowed with different progress levels, and their consumption behaviors during the program period were tracked. Regulatory focus of program participants was also assessed.

Regression results show that prevention-focused customers are inclined to spend more money, accumulate more stamps and achieve more additional rewards when progress level is high rather than low. This pattern is reversed for promotion-focused customers.

Future research may investigate the underlying mechanism by testing potential mediators. Researchers may also test the model in non-retail settings such as service industries.

The findings provide insights to firms regarding when and how to motivate customers with different regulatory orientations in loyalty programs.

This study examines the joint effect of regulatory focus and progress level on people’s consumption behaviors. The model was tested using actual consumption data collected in a retail setting.

Marketers spend considerable resources to motivate people to consume their products and services as a means of goal attainment. Why people change their consumption behaviour is based largely on these goals; many products and services are used by consumers in an effort to attain hoped‐for selves and/or to avoid feared selves. Despite the importance for marketers in understanding how current performance influences a consumer's future efforts, this topic has received little attention in marketing research. The aim of this paper is to fill some of the gaps.

The paper provides a theoretical framework and uses two studies to test this. Study 1, of 203 women, aged 27‐65, examines the predictions in the context of women and visible signs of skin aging. Feedback information is measured and approach and avoidance regulatory systems are manipulated by priming hoped‐for and feared possible selves. Study 2, of 281 undergraduate men and women, replicates the findings of Study 1 with manipulated feedback, using a different context (gym training) and a sample of both male and females.

The research shows that when consumers pursue a hoped‐for self, it is expectations of success that most strongly drive their motivation. It also shows why doing badly when trying to avoid a feared self is more motivating than doing well.

The findings have important implications as they reveal how managers can motivate customers to keep using a product or service.

The paper makes several contributions to the consumer goal research literature since little is known about how positive (hoped‐for selves) and negative (feared selves) reference points in self‐regulation differentially influence consumer goal‐directed behaviour.

This study aims to examine the interplay between focal and background goals in consumer financial decision-making and identify conditions that lead individuals to trade-off financial returns for background goals.

The current research reviews the relevant literature on consumer financial decision-making and goal systems theory to develop a set of hypotheses that is tested using three experiments.

The experiments show that individuals who have been subtly primed with self-expressive background goals, or experienced progress toward the focal goal of financial returns, accept lower financial returns for the opportunity to invest in stocks that allow for increased self-expression. Further, while subtly primed background goals exert a non-normative influence on investment decisions, explicit cues about an investment’s background goal-instrumentality create a backlash effect, and decrease individuals’ willingness to trade-off financial returns.

Future research could confirm the robustness of the findings of the present research by using different priming tasks and alternative ways of making the background goal explicit to individuals.

To achieve greater attraction among individual investors, it helps to frame a financial product or stock in communications materials in a way that sends subtle signals with which investors can identify. Such signals could include stressing the product/company’s home country (addressing individuals’ patriotism) or a particular product domain (addressing individual investors’ desire for interesting/exciting current/future products).

While previous research suggests that investment choices may be influenced by self-expressive motivations, to date, it remains unclear whether and when individual investors are actually willing to trade-off the focal goal of maximizing financial returns for the opportunity to satisfy alternative background goals.

In line with conservation of resources theory and signaling theory, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and test a multiple mediation model in which telecommuting affects engagement via perceived supervisor goal support and goal progress.

A three-phase longitudinal study carried out over ten months was used to test the hypotheses.

Individuals who worked in organizations that offer telecommuting were more engaged than those who worked in organizations that did not offer telecommuting. Furthermore, telecommuting availability was not only directly but also indirectly related to engagement via perceived supervisor goal support and goal progress. Engagement in general decreased over time. However, individuals who attained their personal work goals were able to maintain high levels of engagement.

Giving employees the option to telecommute could increase employee engagement. This study is correlational in nature and relied on self-report data.

This is the first study examining the effects of telecommuting on engagement over a period of ten months. It is also the first study to use perceived supervisor goal support and goal progress as explanatory variables to the teleworking and engagement relationship.

The lack of services for adults on the autism spectrum is of growing concern. Given the huge variation in how autism impacts people, individualized approaches might be particularly effective. The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of a community-based life-skills coaching program for adults with autism “LifeMAP.”

LifeMAP is structured around individualized meetings between a client and their coach where they identify, prioritize and make progress toward self-selected goals. LifeMAP was established in 2008 and has since served around 2,600 clients. This paper provides an outline of the LifeMAP program, how sessions with clients are structured, goals that adults with autism prioritize and preliminary data on progress toward goal attainment.

Findings indicated that the LifeMAP program model was effective in supporting progress toward goals, increasing confidence toward goals and reducing anxiety.

Given the scope of the LifeMAP program, this overview is unique in providing pertinent information to others looking for effective and authentic strategies to support autistic adults and those transitioning from high school. This study provides a realistic perspective on how programs are applied in community-based settings, outside a structured, formal lab setting. It is concluded that individualized intervention approaches might be key to successful outcomes for adults with autism.

Marketers may proactively give customers personalized notices regarding their progress toward certain rewards as a means to stimulate ongoing behaviors. This paper aims to investigate the effect on customer repatronage intention by framed messages concerning either goal-distance or consequences of an action and it also seeks to identify important variables moderating those responses.

Five between-subjects experiments examined how participants’ repatronage intentions, in response to the framing of goal-distance (Study 1a) and consequences of an action (Study 2a), varied as a function of their level of progress toward goal completion and also tested if the framing effects might be attenuated when relationship benefit was high rather than low (Studies 1b and 2b). They further adopted perceived reciprocity as an underlying mechanism for examining the interplay between these two kinds of framing in stimulating ongoing behavior (Study 3).

Although messages which emphasized what individuals need to spend more to attain a reward (versus how short they are from earning a reward) or loss following inaction (versus gain following action) were likely to erode intention, such effects were confined to individuals with a moderate level of progress. This intention-eroding effect was further attenuated by attractive reward. The persuasive advantages of short-from-the-end framing of goal-distance over more-to-the-end counterparts were found to be diminished when paired with a loss-framed message concerning consequences of an action. Furthermore, the observed effects on intention were mediated by perceived reciprocity.

The studies add to the current understanding of how the way in which information is presented might enhance loyalty or fail to do so.

The present study aims to demonstrate that the volunteering licenses people to indulge in luxury purchase, and both heightened moral self-evaluation and reduced guilt mediate the effect of licensing on ratings of a luxury item by implementing three experimental studies. This study explained the moral licensing behavior using a passive goal guidance model: i.e., people license themselves to indulge when people perceive progress on one of their long-term goals.

In this paper, three experiments were used to test hypotheses.

The present paper is new in terms of three aspects. First, moral self-evaluation as a mediator is tested using a more stringent method in comparison to prior studies. Second, reduced guilt which had not yet been explicitly tested is established as a mediator. Third, the present study demonstrates that the passive goal guidance model as a valid theory in explaining the licensing behavior by showing that when people perceive progress in a long-term goal by helping others in need, they are more likely to engage in dysfunctional luxury brand purchases. Previous studies have used credentialing theory to explain this.

The present study established and confirmed that reduced guilt is a mediator in the licensing effect on the purchase of luxury items.

The main research questions addressed by this study focus on Subjective Well-Being (SWB) and to what extent the individual's SWB relates to the individual's need for personal growth. Specific interest is devoted to the effects of intentions (to have personal goals) and behavior (to achieve personal goals).

Can SWB and happiness research help to explain the tremendous growth in demanding amateur sport event participation? Most research on SWB and events has, so far been undertaken on cultural events leaving a gap related to sport events, especially obstacle running events. Bestial is an obstacle race event held in Arucas on Canary Islands, Spain. Apart from competitiveness, the race also contains elements of altruism as many competitors do help each other at various obstacles along the route, in groups (mainly) teams. A sample of 700 participants answered questions about behavior, attitudes and SWB.

The results show significant relations between SWB and both intentions and behavior but also that intentions and behavior are not correlated.

The “Bestial” is different from an average running event in some respects. It is a rather local event for Gran Canaria without international participation. For some participants it is more challenging and enduring but for others it is a team sport where one helps other team members to complete the race. In this study, these two types of participation have not been separated. The test of whether the SWB of participants is higher than the SWB of the average citizen is not satisfactory. Data for the average of SWB in Spain had to depend on a study from another year and where standard deviation was not available.

The results of this work are useful for event managers to improve their design and develop the most appropriate marketing messages.

The study aims for an explanation to why demanding physical activities, such as obstacle races, are so popular. In this study of obstacle race participation, hedonia is regarded as less relevant and focus is on eudaimonia and an assumption that participants in an obstacle race have a high SWB since they can feel that they make progress towards goals. One intended contribution of this study is to distinguish between “to have a goal” and “to progress towards a goal”. Thus, the model proposed is based on hypotheses that SWB is influenced by both. Two types of goals are studied: first a mainly individualistic goal of becoming physically fit and second a more altruistic goal of “becoming a better person”.

In the conclusions, the importance for a happy life of simply having goals for personal growth and the value of anticipation for happiness is discussed.