Motivating consumers to adopt healthier diets and more active lifestyles will not only require interventions at the consumer-level, but also upstream measures at the policy level. “Acknowledging this multifaceted nature of the obesity problem, it is evident that no single scientific discipline can claim to offer a silver bullet for curbing the obesity epidemic. The causes of unhealthy diets and physical inactivity are known to be complex and multifaceted. The most important finding is that all of these aforementioned factors can differently affect people’s expectancy and value perceptions and thus their motivation to engage in health behaviors.’’ “In my dissertation, I draw on Vroom’s expectancy value theory and posit that consumers’ motivation to engage in healthy food choices and physical activity is jointly shaped by expectancy-their expected probability to successfully engage in these behaviors-and value-the situational value assigned to their health goals. Ultimately, Storch’s research is an exploration of a range of different external (marketing and social environment) and internal (lay beliefs about the malleability of one’s body weight, emotions, goal conflicts) forces that denote barriers or opportunities to the maintenance of healthier diets and engagement in physical activity. “More people started working out from home with the help of different types of digital aids (workout videos, mobile apps, remote classes via Zoom) and I studied how different online workout formats affect exercisers’ motivation throughout their workouts.” Storch finds that workouts which better convey the feeling of participating in a shared exercise experience with the trainer are more conducive to exerciser’s motivation to persist during the workout. Storch’s last empirical project was inspired by the global corona virus outbreak. I demonstrate the detrimental effects that such “high-effort framings” can have for people’s motivation.” “Companies frequently utilize information to emphasize the effectiveness of their products and services for attaining consumers’ health goals (“no pain, no gain”), but fall short of strengthening consumers’ confidence in their ability to enact the activity simultaneously. Storch further studied how marketing communication in the market for fitness products affects consumers’ self-efficacy perceptions and their intentions to exercise in her second PhD project. Also, pride can strengthen people’s sense of self-efficacy – it signals that people already made virtuous choices in the past, thus indirectly providing evidence for their ability to pursue their long-term goals and emboldening them to make long-term goal-oriented choices in the future.” Storch finds that pride is particularly helpful for people who perceive to have little personal control over their body weight and therefore tend to disengage from health behaviors compared with people who perceive their weight as controllable through effort. “Pride can be a powerful motivational force as people want to feel good about themselves and the things that they do. In her first empirical project, Storch tested if the recall of pride from previous achievements related and unrelated to the health domain could stimulate healthier food choices. In this blog article, Storch reflects on the research process and discusses her findings. That is why Storch dedicated her PhD research to investigating how consumers can be motivated to implement healthy food choices and physical activity into their daily lives. Her mantra is that when we understand why exactly people struggle to lead a healthy lifestyle, we can come up with interventions to help them overcome possible obstacles. However, she knows that engaging in health-promoting practices and abstaining from health-preventing behaviors can at times be easier said than done. This is something Julia Storch, PhD candidate at FEB’s Marketing department, firmly believes. Health – a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being – is a crucial determinant of people’s happiness.
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