The effect of goal visualization on goal pursuit: implications for consumers and managers
Cheema and Bagchi's 2011 paper in the Journal of Marketing tested whether making progress easy to see changes motivation near a goal. As the university release describes the experiments, participants held a hand grip while watching a filling bar or a stopwatch, and the stopwatch group's effort fell more steeply near the end. People waiting for live-chat support who saw a filling bar were more likely to keep waiting, and salespeople showed a similar effect. Subgoals sometimes drew attention from the main goal when the distance to it was already clear and certain. No figure is used in the article.
Cheema and Bagchi's 2011 paper in the Journal of Marketing tested whether making progress easy to see changes motivation near a goal. As the university release describes the experiments, participants held a hand grip while watching a filling bar or a stopwatch, and the stopwatch group's effort fell more steeply near the end. People waiting for live-chat support who saw a filling bar were more likely to keep waiting, and salespeople showed a similar effect. Subgoals sometimes drew attention from the main goal when the distance to it was already clear and certain. No figure is used in the article.
Written from the journal record and a university news release (secondary report), 2026-11-02.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Cheema, A., & Bagchi, R. (2011). The effect of goal visualization on goal pursuit: implications for consumers and managers. Journal of Marketing, 75(2), 109-123. doi:10.1509/jm.75.2.109 https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.75.2.109