consumer behavior

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Conceptualizing Involvement

The plethora of consumer behavior and social psychological literature on involvement suggests considerable interest in this construct. There has not, however, been a common conceptual or methodological framework to its examination in either literature (Laaksonen, 1994; Jain and Srinivasen, 1990; Rothschild, 1984; Zaichkowsky, 1985; Traylor and Joseph, 1984).
Three main perspectives of involvement are evident in extant literature; product-centered, subject-centered and response centered orientations (Finn, 1983).
The product-centered perspective defines involvement as the perceived importance of the product to the consumer, i.e. whether the product is trivial and, therefore, unimportant, or serious and thus important.
The subject-centered view maintains that consumers differ in terms of involvement-type variables. Three sub-groupings of subject-centered definitions have been postulated. They include interest/importance, relevancy (goals/consequences) and commitment (ego involvement). In this perspective, involvement has been defined as either the level of interest the consumer has in a product category or how important it is to her; the level a consumer is involved with a product in so far as it is related to some achievable end or concerns information that will directly impact on them; and, the level of commitment the consumer exhibits with respect to her position on an issue (Greenwald and Leavitt, 1984; Rothschild, 1984; Simon, 1967).
The final alternative perspective views involvement as response-centered. This view holds that involvement is the active participation in information processing (Engel and Blackwell, 1982; Bettman, 1979).

Despite the many and varied definitions of consumer involvement that have emerged in the literature, two common ideas emerge: first, involvement is a multi-dimensional construct
(McQuarrie and Munson, 1986; Laurent and Kapferer, 1985), and, second, it is a motivational force which can help explain various behavioral outcomes, (for example, number and type of choice criteria, extensiveness of information search, length of decision-making process, variety seeking, and brand switching). The multi-dimensional aspect of involvement has been demonstrated by various researchers who suggest that the dimensions include:

normative involvement - the importance of product class to values, emotions, and ...

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