Definition of Consumer Involvement

Some consumers are characterized as being more involved in products and shopping than others. A consumer who is highly involved with a product would be interested in knowing a lot about it before purchasing. Hence he reads brochures thoroughly, compares brands and models available at different outlets, asks questions, and looks for recommendations. Thus consumer involvement can be defined as heightened state of awareness that motivates consumers to seek out, attend to, and think about product information prior to purchase.

Causes of Consumer Involvement

The factors that influences consumer involvement include personal, product and situational.

Personal Factors

Self-concept, needs, and values are the three personal factors that influence the extent of consumer involvement in a product or service. The more product image, the value symbolism inherent in it and the needs it serves are fitting together with the consumer self- image, values and needs, the more likely the consumer is to feel involved in it. Celebrities for example share a certain self-image, certain values, and certain needs. They tend to use products and services that reflect their life style. They get highly involved in purchasing prestigious products like designer wear, imported cars, health care products etc.

Product Factors

The consumer involvement grows as the level of perceived risk in the purchase of a good or service increases. It is likely that consumers will feel more involved in the purchase of their house than in the purchase of tooth paste, because it is a much riskier purchase.

Product differentiation affects involvement. The involvement increases as the number of alternatives that they have to choose from, increases.

The pleasure one gets by using a product or service can also influence involvement. Some products are a greater source of pleasure to the consumer than others. Tea and coffee have a high level of hedonic (pleasure) value compared to, say household cleaners. Hence the involvement is high.

Involvement increases when a product gains public attention. Any product that is socially visible or that is consumed in public, demands high involvement. For example, involvement in the purchase of car is more than the purchase of household items.

Situational Factors

The situation in which the product is bought or used can generate emotional involvement. The reason for purchase or purchase occasion affects involvement. For example, buying a pair of socks for oneself is far less involved than buying a gift for a close friend.

Social pressure can significantly increase involvement. One is likely to be more self conscious about the products and brands one looks at when shopping with friends than when shopping alone.

The need to make a fast decision also influences involvement. A consumer who needs a new refrigerator and sees a ‘one- day- only sale’ at an appliances retailer does not have the time to shop around and compare different brands and prices. The eminence of the decision heightens involvement.

The involvement is high when the decision is irrevocable, for example when the retailer does not accept return or exchange on the sale items.

Thus involvement may be from outside the individual, as with situational involvement or from with in the individual as with enduring involvement. It can be induced by a host of personal-product-and situation related factors, many of which can be controlled by the marketer. It affects the ways in which consumers see, process, and send information to others.

Types of Involvement

The two types of involvement are:

Situation

Enduring

Situational Involvement

`Situational involvement is temporary and refers to emotional feelings of a consumer, experiences in a particular situation when one thinks of a specific product.

Enduring Involvement

Enduring involvement is persistent over time and refers to feelings experienced toward a product category across different situations. For example, holiday- makers renting a resort for their trip are highly involved in their choice, but their involvement is temporary. Whereas involvement of a person whose hobby is bike racing endures overtime and affects his responses in any situation related to pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase of sport bikes. It is observed that involvement is triggered by special situation in the case of holiday makers, but in the second case, it comes from, and is a part of the consumer.

The contrast between situational and enduring involvement is important. When marketers measure involvement they examine the extent to which it can be induced by the product or selling situation. After noticing the type of involvement they are facing, marketers work to control products or selling situations.

Effects of Consumer Involvement

Involvement with the product makes consumers process the product-related information more readily. This information is processed thoroughly; hence, it is retained for a longtime. Because of this the consumers become emotionally high and tend to engage in extended problem solving and word- of-mouth communications. These result into three categories: search for information, processing information, and information transmission.

Customers who are highly involved tend to search for information and shop around more when compared with low involvement customers. For example, the customer who is highly involved with cars and thinks about buying it is likely to gather information. He sees for alternative models to figure the advantages and disadvantages of each. The more they are involved, the more they learn about the alternatives with in that category. To gather the information they use various sources. One such behavior is to shop around, where they visit various outlets and talk to sales people. The customers of this kind should be encouraged buy retailers to visit the outlets to know, and compare various models to meet information needs.

Processing of Information

Processing of information means depth of comprehension, extent of cognitive elaboration, and the extent of emotional arousal of information as discussed below.

Depth of Comprehension

Highly involved customers tend to process product information at deeper levels of understanding than the ones with low involvement. For example educated parents in urban areas are highly involved in baby food purchase decisions than rural uneducated parents. They also retain this information for long time. In this case marketers need to provide information cues to help the consumers to retrieve information from memory. But when the target is low involvement consumers, marketers should make the necessary information as accessible as possible at the time of selection and buying of the product.

Extent of Cognitive Elaboration

Highly involved customers think more about product choices than consumers with low involvement. Their deep understanding involves support arguments and / or counter arguments. That is, highly involved consumers tend to generate cognitive responses either in support of the product information or against the information provided by the marketers.

If we talk of the previous example, marketing baby food products, the product all though effective may have significant side effects like obesity. Educated parents are likely to give this the great deal of thought before giving it to their children. To ensure that the parents generate positive thoughts, the marketers have to mention a quality argument that the product benefits outweigh its negative effects. If the arguments are less informed and not persuasive, it is likely to produce negative thoughts resulting in an unfavorable attitude towards the product.

Level of Emotional Arousal

Highly involved consumers are more emotional than less involved consumers.

The highly involved consumers react more strongly to the product-related information which may act for or against marketers. This is because the negative interpretation is likely to be exaggerated more number of times causing the customers to reject the product.

Information Transmission

Transmission of information is the extent to which greatly involved customers send information about the product to others. This is done usually through word-of-mouth communication. The researchers have shown that if consumers are highly involved they talk about the product frequently than others. Satisfied consumers are likely to speak favourable about the product, while unsatisfied speak negatively. Therefore, marketers catering to highly involved consumers should attempt to enhance consumer satisfaction and decrease dissatisfaction. For example, customer happy with ONIDA television communicates the same to others through word-of-mouth.

Models of Consumer Involvement

There are four prominent models of consumer behavior based on involvement which help marketers in making strategic decision particularly in marketing communication related strategies. The four models are as follows.

Low Involvement Learning Model

Learn-Feel-Do Hierarchy model

Level of Message Processing Model

Product versus Brand Involvement Model

Low Involvement Learning Model

Low Involvement products are those which are at low risk, perhaps by virtue of being inexpensive, and repeatedly used by consumers. Marketers try to sell the products without changing the attitudes of consumers. New product beliefs replace old brand perceptions. Marketers achieve low– involvement learning through proper positioning. For example, writing pen with the ‘uninterrupted flow’, and tooth paste with ‘mouth wash’ positioning attracts new consumers.

Learn-Feel-Do Hierarchy Model

Buying decisions vary according to the way they are taken. Some decisions are taken with lot of thinking others are taken with great feelings. Some are made through force of habit and others are made consciously. The learn-feel-do hierarchy is simple matrix that attributes consumer choice to information (learn), attitude (feel), and behavior (do) issues. The matrix has four quadrants, each specifying a major marketing communication goal to be informative, to be effective, to be habit forming, or promote self-satisfaction. Thinking and feeling are shown as a continuum - some decisions involve one or the other and many involve elements of both. High and low importance is also represented as a continuum.

High Involvement / High Thinking

Purchases in first quadrant require more information, both because of the importance of the product to the consumer and thinking issues related to the purchases. Major purchases such as cars, houses and other expensive and infrequently buying items come under this category. The strategy model is learn-feel-do. Marketers have to furnish full information to get consumer acceptance of the product.

High Involvement / High Feeling

The purchase decisions in second quadrant involve less of information than feeling. Typical purchases tied to self-esteem- jewelry, apparel, cosmetics and accessories come under this category. The strategy model is feel-learn-do. To encourage purchases marketers must approach customers with emotion and appeal.

Low Involvement / Low Feeling

The purchases in this quadrant are motivated primarily by the need to satisfy personal tastes, many of which are influenced by self-image. Products like news paper, soft drinks, Liquor etc., fall under this category. Group influences often lead to the purchase of these items. The strategy model is do-feel-learn. It helps marketers to promote products through reference groups and other social factors.

Low Involvement / Low Thinking

It involves less in thinking and more of habitual buying. Products like stationery, groceries, food etc., fall under this category. Over a period of time any product can fall in this segment. The role of information is to differentiate any ‘point of difference’ from competitors. Brand loyalty may result simply from the habit. The strategy model is do-learn-feel. It suggests that marketers induce trial through various sales promotion techniques.

Level of Message Processing Model

Consumer attention to advertisements or any other marketing communication depends on four levels of consumer involvement: Pre-attention, focal attention, comprehension and elaboration. Each calls for different level of message processing. Pre-attention demands only limited message processing - the consumer only identifies the product. Focal attention involves basic information as product name or usefulness. In comprehension level, the message is analyzed and the content of the message is integrated with other information, through elaboration, which helps to build attitude towards the product. It is suggested that marketers make advertisements which can induce elaboration.

Product versus Brand Involvement Model

Sometimes consumer is involved with the product category but may not be necessarily involved with the particular brand or vice versa. For example, house wives know more about kitchen ware but may not know the details of various brands. According to the consumer involvement in either product or particular brand, consumer types can be divided into four categories as described below.

Brand Loyals: These consumers are highly involved with both the product category and with particular brand. For example, cigarette smokers and paper readers fall in this category.

Information Seekers: These buyers are involved more with product category but may not have preferred brand. They are likely to see information to decide a particular brand. For examples, air-conditioners and washing machine buyers fall under this category.

Routine Brand Buyers: These consumers are not highly involved with the product category but may be involved with the particular brand within that category. They have low emotional attachment with the product category and tied mainly with their brand. For example users of particular brand of soap for years, regular visitors to particular restaurant fall in this category.

Brand Switching: Consumers in this category have no emotional attachment either with product category or any brand within it. They typically respond to price. For example stationery items, fashion products come under this category.