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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...rable groups to take control of their reproductive health. To improve public health, social marketing focuses on changing prevailing attitudes and behaviors at all levels. In order to do this, people must believe that they are at risk. They must feel confident they have the power to change their own behavior, and new behavior must be compatible with prevailing cultural norms. In addition, health providers and retailers must often be convinced that the products and services being promoted are needed, safe and socially acceptable.
Increased health impact. Social marketing is considered one of the most effective types of public health interventions because it offers measurable results. The ultimate goal of social marketing is social impact. In the area of public health, this translates into reduced risky or unhealthy behaviors that can in turn have an impact on the spread of diseases, chronic malnutrition or uncontrolled birth rates. Social marketing impact is often measured in terms of CYP (contraceptive years of protection), reduced prevalence of diseases such as sexually transmitted infections, malaria and food-borne diarrhea, or increased number of patients at network clinics.
Consumer behavior is the ways that consumers exhibit in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of, products and services. The study of consumer behavior as a separate marketing discipline all started when marketers realized that consumers did not always react as marketing theory suggested they would (Ekström, 2003). Many consumers rebel at using the identical products that everyone else used, instead they prefer differentiated products that they feel reflect their own special needs, personality and lifestyles.
These consumer behavior has evolved in order to request more interaction from the companies and brands in order to provide a full image about what motives the company to provide an excellent product or service. The comparison made by Kotler (2010) has emerge in a way to understand how the companies have to present themselves to the consumers.
social marketing and targeted media public communication; providing accessible health information resources at community levels; active collaboration with personal health care providers to reinforce health promotion
When purchasing any product, myself and any consumer go through a decision process. This process consists of up to five stages: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decisions and past purchase behavior. The length of the decision process will vary based on what product I am looking for and the importance it has to me. The first thing that I notice myself doing while purchasing a product was being influenced by any of several people such as my parents or friends in my purchasing decisions. The number of people involved in my buying decision increased with the level of how big my purchase was.
... of consumer behaviour, lays emphasis on the objectivity of science and the consumer as a reasonable and sensible decision maker. While, the interpretive point of view is in contrast to that of the positivist, in that it emphasises on the importance of the subjective meaning of the consumers individual experience, hence, it suggest that whichever behaviour a consumer performs is subject to diverse interpretations to a certain extent than just a single explanation to it.
Overall social marketing is the use of marketing tools to help solve health, social and other problems, which brings positive social change. Social marketers such as; commercial marketers are involved in activities that bring behavior change to accomplish their goals. However, commercial marketers measure their success on product sales, brand recognition or market share, while social marketers prefer results that will improve individuals and societal well-being. Social marketing motivation is not based on the success of profit, but the improvement of public good (Donovan 2011). Social marketing is considered to promote public health and community and to influence consumers to engage in healthy
Define the problem, purpose and focus: Social marketing campaign must first begin with clearly determining public health problem which can include a severe epidemic (severe acute respiratory syndrome), an evolving issue (increase in alcohol consumption and teen smoking), or a justifiable need (public education on the prevention of AIDS). AT this stage, it is critical to identify and summarize the factors that led to the motivation and decision for developing such a campaign. This is followed by evolving a purpose statement which will indicate the impacts and benefits this campaign will generate when successful.
Consumers with brand loyalty are indifferent with too many choices in shopping as they tend to ignore other brands and chooses product from their preferred brand.
To accomplish this in an efficient way, health promotion is targeted towards the population, through building social interventions, such as promoting proper eating habits. Health promotion does not focus on the negative influences on health. Instead, it aims to enhance the level of well-being through a safe environment, to prevent disease (Potter, 2010). Many public health organizations around the world agree that promotion of health is an effective method to bring knowledge and decision making skills to citizens, whilst reducing the consequences such as treatment and hospitalization (World Health Organization,
Every company wants to understand why people decide to buy its products or others. Firstly, we have to understand why people buy certain kind of product. People buy products because they need them. A need is activated and felt when there is a sufficient discrepancy between a desired or preferred state of being and the actual state. (Engle£¬Blackwell and Miniard. 1995. p407 ) For example, when you feel hungry, what you needs is some food. It is very important for marketer to understand the needs of consumers. All the consumers may have the same needs, but the ways which they satisfy what they need are different. Here is a example, Chinese people would choose rice when they feel hungry, whilst British people may choose bread to satisfy their needs.
Consumers all over the world will view information and process the same differently. It is thus of great necessity that businesses come up with effective mechanisms which will effectively and efficiently communicate their business to their clients. In understanding the consumer process for choice, various practices have been examined and affected. The methods of choice include monitoring of information, eye movement monitoring and issues to do with task analysis among others. The studying of such methods has demonstrated the characteristics of the consumer behavior and the implementation of such choices.
Involvement is the amount of time and effort a potential consumer invests in the search, evaluation and decision processes. Customers don’t have to involve a lot while buying the product as they can find a lot of information online or their friends, relatives. (Low)
There are various factors that could affect to a customer’s behavior. Based on their own knowledge and experiences, some customers could quickly make their purchase decision while the others are more involved in the making decision process. These types of customers lead to the concept of high and low involvement purchase which reflects how much information customer search for their making purchase decision or how much customers interested or involve in consuming a service or product. Consumer involvement refers as the level of interaction between companies that offers a product or services with their customers
Consumer behaviour is defined as the behaviour that consumers undertake in seeking, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their personal needs (Nayeem 2012). Different consumer may have different choices in purchase that is dependent on various influences. High involvement purchase sets the best example of engaging in consumer behaviour in various aspects as complex buying behaviour occurs when the consumer is highly involved with the purchase and when there are significant differences between brands. This behaviour can be associated with the purchase of a something significant in value and meaning to consumer which could be risky (Tanner 2012). High involvement purchase could be deduced from both emotional and rational perspective. Evidently, there are various dimensions and avenues to high involvement purchase and thus this essay to focus on that.This essay will analyse the behaviour of a consumer who is an international Chinese student who is involved in a high involvement purchase of Chinese New Year gifts. Meanwhile, the influences of purchase situation, decision making process, internal & external influences on the student’s selection between different brands of lanolin cream will also be further analyzed in this essay.
“Most consumer researchers were more comfortable with positivistic approaches than interpretive research.” (Ladik, Carrillat, & Tadajewski, 2015, p. 185)