Ying Zhang
Ying Zhang is a marketing researcher and the first author, with Szu-chi Huang, of "How endowed versus earned progress affects consumer goal commitment and motivation", published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2010. The paper complicated the simple advice to give customers a head start.
Who they are
Zhang studies how consumers pursue goals. This site draws on the 2010 paper only.
This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.
Key papers
How endowed versus earned progress affects consumer goal commitment and motivation (2010), with Szu-chi Huang. The abstract reports that the same amount of progress can raise or lower commitment to a goal, depending on whether people attribute it to themselves or to circumstance, and on what stage of the goal they are at.
Key ideas
The central idea is that a head start is interpreted. Progress that feels earned can signal that the goal is worth pursuing; progress that feels handed out can mean something different, and its effect changes as the goal advances. The finding sits alongside Joseph Nunes and Xavier Drèze's 2006 car wash study as a boundary on the endowed progress effect rather than a contradiction of it.
Sources
- Zhang, Y., & Huang, S.-C. (2010). How endowed versus earned progress affects consumer goal commitment and motivation. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(4), 641-654. doi:10.1086/655417