Low and High Involvement Products
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Products chosen
The low involvement product chosen is a sandwich which is usually bought by consumers without any real planning or previous thought before the purchase. Most of the times, the consumers simply buy it on the spot since they feel that they are hungry and they just need something to eat. The product is not necessarily bought on impulse but consumers may form a habit towards purchasing the product. The high involvement product chosen is a holiday package. The consumer takes considerable amount of time to plan and find alternatives before settling on the holiday package they want to buy. This is because it is not a routine purchase and costs a lot of money. The consumer thus needs to spend time to compare different holiday packages based on their location, number of days, price, etc.
The first step of the five stage model of the purchase decision process is problem recognition. This is where the consumer receives the trigger for the decision which can either be an internal or external stimulus. The second step is the search for information where the person scans their memory or consults with friends for previous experiences with certain products. The consumer may also search other sources such as magazines and newspapers for advertisements of the products they wish to buy. The third step is the evaluation of alternatives. Here, the consumer assesses the value of each product and tries to develop their own perception on which is more valuable. The fourth step is purchase decision where the consumer decides where they will buy the product, when and how they will pay for the product. The last step is the post-purchase behavior. Here, the person compares their expectations of the product with the actual satisfaction or dissatisfaction received. For high involvement products, the consumer goes through all steps in the model but for low involvement model, the consumer may make an impulse purchase to avoid making the choice Rao, 1969()
Differences in purchase decision processes
In the first step of the purchase process, for the sandwich which is the low-involvement product, the internal stimulus can...
For the holiday package, the internal stimulus can be the purchaser's desire for a holiday while the external stimulus can be an advertisement of the holiday package. In the information search process, for the sandwich, the consumer may only consider their own previous experiences or friends' experiences with certain shops or food stands. This is often sufficient since the sandwich is a frequently purchased product. However, for the holiday package, the person would need to go a step further to search other sources such as the Internet, magazines, newspapers, etc. To find the right holiday package. In the third step of evaluating alternatives, for the high involvement product, the holiday package, the purchaser visits different tour companies in order to see the objective attributes of the packages such as hotels, flights, meals, etc. And also to see the subjective factors such as prestige. The purchaser then creates their evaluation criteria for each holiday package which they use to find the right holiday package. For the low involvement product, the evaluation criteria may be simply the objective attributes of the sandwich such as dressing, additives, etc.
For the purchase decision process, for the low involvement products, the decision is influenced by superficial attributes such as size of the sandwich, price and past experience. This is different from the purchase decision for the high involvement products whereby the purchase decision is influenced by other factors such as refund policy, terms of sale, pleasantness of the holiday destination. In the last step which is the post-purchase behavior, for the high involvement products, there is a great deal of post-purchase anxiety since the product costs a fortune to purchase and the consumer wants to be sure they made the right decision Dalal, Lee, & Sabavala, 1984.
However, for the low involvement products, the consumer will simply decide on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the product which influences their purchase decision.
Application of model of consumer buying behavior
The implications for marketers as a result…
