ARE PEOPLE ARE MORE MOTIVATED AS THEY GET CLOSER TO A GOAL?
Example: A
Scenario A: Bob receives a rewards card for Susie
B's Coffee Shack.. The 10th Coffee is free.
Example B
Scenario B: Roger receives a rewards card for Susie
B's Coffee The 12th Coffee is free, however 2 cups are
prefilled in already.
Question: How long will it take
you to get each card filled up?
Who knows.
Question: Will it take longer or
shorter for scenario a versus
scenario B? After all, you have to
buy 10 cups of coffee in both
scenarios in order to get the free
coffee.
The answer, is yes. You'll fill up
the card faster with Card B
then with Card A. And the
reason is called the goal –
gradient effect!
The goal gradient effect states that you will accelerate your
behavior as you progress closer to your goal. The coffee reward
card scenarios I described above were part of a research study by
Ran Kivetz (2006) to see if people would act like the rats did in an
original 1934 study. And the answer is, yes, they do. In addition to
the coffee shop study, Kivetz found that people would go to a
website more frequently and rate more songs during each visit as
they got closer to a reward goal at the site.