Although there is increased awareness of issues surrounding consumer
well-being, consumers often lack the personal commitment to improve
their quality of life. This article builds on the concept of a goal
hierarchy to propose that small acts may have unintended, large
consequences on various domains of consumer well-being. A decrease in
commitment to well-being goals (e.g., sustaining the natural
environment) may stem from people's failure to achieve everyday subgoals
(e.g., failing to recycle a newspaper). Four experiments in three
contexts (i.e., consumer overspending, environmentally friendly
behaviors, and charitable donations) show that when people perceive the
endgoal as unimportant, even a single behavioral failure may reduce
commitment to a well-being endgoal and weaken future intentions to
perform behaviors that improve their quality of life. In addition, goal
importance moderates the adverse relationship between subgoal
performance and endgoal commitment. The authors present
consumer-specific and marketer-controlled drivers of goal importance
(i.e., goal visualization, self relevance of goals, and aversive
consequences of subgoal failure) and discuss actionable insights for
practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]