If you’ve ever played Wordle, learned a new language on Duolingo, or worked out with Peloton, you may be familiar with daily app notifications that nudge you to keep at it—or risk breaking a streak of consecutive efforts. Do you or don’t you heed the clarion call?

If you do, you’re in good company. Consumers, our latest research shows, are more likely to continue doing something when their recent repetition of that behavior is logged and highlighted to them—as many apps are programmed to do these days. Conversely, when consumers are made aware of the fact that their streak is broken, they’re less likely to keep up the behavior.

In fact, we discovered that consumers go to great lengths to maintain these “streaks” because they deem it to be a meaningful goal in and of itself, independent of what they hope to achieve: keeping fit, learning a new language, etc.

Our findings suggest ways for businesses to better leverage technology to keep customers coming back, as well as for consumers to motivate themselves to pursue desirable goals. Organizations could also improve efforts to increase employee engagement and motivation.

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