Buying and selling are often goal-directed activities, but until recently little effort has been devoted to the specification of how decision makers select and strive for goals. The articles in this issue explore a number of specific ways that goals enter market behavior.
One way concerns how goals are formed and decisions made. In the first article, Gutman shows how the laddering technique can be used to generate a means -end chain of goals comprised of action goals concerning the self, outcome goals linked to actions, and consequences stemming from outcomes. Peterman then examines the effects of goals on information acquisition, encoding, and evaluation.
The third article, by Park, Sohi, and Marquardt, develops a theory of how goals influence the choice of vendor by organizational buyers. Next, Lynn and Harris propose a scale that measures the extent to which consumers hold as personal goals the acquisition and possession of unique products or services. Finally, Verbeke tests a theory of emotional contagion and finds that the achievement of performance goals by salespeople depends on their ability to infect customers with their own emotions, as well as their ability to be receptive to the emotions given off by the customers.