JH - Decision making and involvement

• Consumer decision-making is complicated due to the sheer number of decisions in a marketplace with hyper choice
• Impulsive decision-making


  • Consumers experience a sudden, powerful, and persistent urge to buy the product immediately
  • Diminished concern as to consequences
  • Not only associated with low-value goods
  • Emotional rather than rational
• Consumer decision-making is a central part of consumer behaviour
• Time is an important resource that often determines the effort and search put into a decision
• Problem recognition occurs when there is a significant difference between the current state and a desired state, prompting action
• Product choice today involves weeding out excess detail rather than searching for more alternatives
• Consumers evaluate and choose products based on dimensions such as novelty or risk related to the decision
• Decision-making process

  We seek to solve a problem or achieve a desired goal
• Limited problem-solving

  Occurs when the consumer is less motivated to search for information or evaluate alternatives rigorously
• Consumer moods are influenced by the pleasure and arousal a store environment creates
• Decision-making is not always strictly rational, influenced by principles of mental accounting
• Consumer decision process

  1. Pre-purchase: Awareness of want/need, search/evaluation of information about brands, products, or services

  2. Purchase

  3. Consumption

  4. Post-purchase: Evaluation in use, assuage anxiety, information to other users and potential users
• Marketers' role in problem creation

  • Encouraging primary demand: consumers to use products regardless of brand
  • Encouraging secondary demand: consumers to prefer one brand over another
• Consumers almost constantly need to make decisions about products, some important and effortful, others automatic
• Involvement

  The perceived relevance of purchase to the consumer
• Information Search

  1. Internal vs. external search

  2. Deliberate vs. accidental search
• Consumers use decision rules when making product choices from alternatives
• Antecedent States affecting purchase

  • Consumer’s mood
  • Time pressure
  • Disposition towards shopping
• Decision-Making Styles

  • Quality-Conscious
  • Brand-Conscious
  • Novelty-Fashion Conscious
  • Recreational
  • Value-Conscious
  • Impulsive
  • Confused
  • Brand-loyal
  • Apathetic
• Problem Recognition

  The perceived difference between an ideal and an actual state motivating the consumer to act
• Consumer product choice

  Consumers use decision rules when making a product choice from among alternatives
• Low Involvement Hierarchy

  • Brand beliefs are formed through passive learning
  • A purchase decision is then made
• Non-compensatory rules

  • Do not allow for positive and negative attributes to balance out
• Low-involvement decision


  Choice is made without intervening steps
• Key difference between high and low involvement from a marketing perspective

  In high involvement consumers are in an active state
• Heuristics

  Mental rules-of-thumb used to simplify decision-making and lead to speedy decisions
• High Involvement Hierarchy

  • Brand beliefs are formed through active learning
  • Brands are then evaluated
  • A purchase decision is made
• Heuristics

  • Quality determined by looking at the price
  • Well-known brand names or a product’s country of origin as a signal of product quality
• Passive learning

  • Acquisition of knowledge without active resistance
  • Absence of resistance to what is learned
• Low-involvement process with many differences between brands


  Consumer may engage in variety-seeking and experiment with different brands
• Consideration set

  Brands actually considered buying
• Evoked set

  All brands aware of which might meet needs
• Level of involvement and relevance of purchases for consumers

  Can bring about different decision-making processes
• Low Involvement

  • Few differences between brands
  • Inertia or spurious loyalty
  • Random choice
• Low-involvement process with few differences between brands


  Consumer may not be too concerned about their choices, leading to inertia or pseudo-loyalty
• Passive learning

  Acquisition of knowledge without active learning
• Principles of mental accounting

  Demonstrate that the way a problem is posed and whether it is put in terms of gains and losses influences what we decide
• Consistent brand purchase over time

  May be due to true brand loyalty or simply due to inertia because it is the easiest thing to do
• Active learning in consumer behaviour context

  Involves the acquisition of knowledge BEFORE purchase and extensive information search
• High-involvement decision


  Choice is made following a process of search and evaluation where some kind of evaluative criteria will be applied