Consumer Behavior: Involvement

1940 Words4 Pages

Introduction
For decades, marketers have been attempting to resolve the mystery of consumer behaviour and find out how and why they involve themselves in certain ways. Involvement is a term used in several disciplines but in regards to marketing, many authors define it to be a variable of motivation, variable differing in person but despite the several proposed definitions by Zaichkowsky (1986), Baker (2002) etc., there is no set definition available.
Over the decades, three key areas of involvement have been identified to be with advertising, product and purchase. Of these, this paper will be examining purchase involvement which is generally described to be relating to level of interest in the purchase process (Beatty, Homer, and Kahle, 1988). The buying process is generally regarded with the following stages: need/problem awareness, information search, and evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase experience (Baker, 2002)
Levels of involvement range from high to low (Choubtarash, Mahdieh, and Marnani, 2013). It has been established that the process of purchasing differs due to this. In other words, different consumers will adopt different purchasing involvement processes for the same product. Using literatures and theories on the two levels of purchase involvements, a critical analysis of my two purchases shall be made next.

My products
Medtronic Pump
Recently, I purchased a diabetic pump from Nairobi, Kenya. I am a juvenile diabetic for the past 15 years and having such a product would change the way I live my life. This purchase would be categorised as a low involvement purchase. The product is a pump which mimics several functions of a pancreas. It delivers insulin like a pancreas and has multiple settings t...

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...ement purchase behaviour. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 31 (7), 732-745. [Online] Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com.ezproxy4.lib.le.ac.uk/journals.htm?articleid=17099905 (Accessed: 15/03/2014).
• Slama, M. E. and Tashchian, A. 1985. Selected socioeconomic and demographic characteristics associated with purchasing involvement. Journal of marketing, 49 (1), 72-82. [Online] Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1251177 . (Accessed: 02/04/2014).
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• Zaichkowsky, J. L. 1986. Conceptualising involvement. Journal of Advertising, 15 (2), 4-14+34 [Online] Available at: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy3.lib.le.ac.uk/stable/4622088 (Accessed: 16/03/2014)

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