A Goal-Systemic Perspective on Customer Inspiration

Customer inspiration represents a novel construct in consumer research and is drawing increasing attention from managerial practice. Managers aim to inspire customers in order to differentiate their companies from competitors as well as to increase customers’ satisfaction, loyalty, and purchase amounts. However, practitioners lack a clear understanding of the construct of inspiration as well as its drivers and effects. Scientifically, inspiration challenges traditional categorizations as it connects cognition with motivation. Building on recent conceptualizations of inspiration in social psychology, this interdisciplinary research explores the process, antecedents and consequences of inspiration in a marketing context. Specifically, it aims to investigate the psychological process which drives customer inspiration. Conceptually, it integrates inspiration in goal systems theory to explain its cognitive and motivational aspects. Multiple hypotheses are derived based thereupon regarding the effects of learning, novelty, openness to experience, goal concreteness, expertise, habits, goal progress, and goal conflict on inspiration. A series of laboratory and field experiments is devised to test these hypotheses. Potential implications for managers, consumers, policy makers, and future research are discussed.