Low and High Involvement in Consumption

In the study of marketing, there are theories concerning the different involvement situations of buying behaviour. By involvement it means the level of interest, emotion and activity the consumer is prepares to expend on a particular purchase. In this essay, examples of goods with low and high invlovement will be investigated and compared, and some personal and social-cultural influences that determine us to behave both as rational information seekers and socially-driven consumers influenced by others will be briefly discussed.

Egg has been chosen as an example with low involvement of purchase. I buy eggs at the supermarket (i.e. Morrison) nearest to me hall of residence. I do this on a regularly basis, say twice a week. I purchase it to cook food for my meals. I do not spend a lot of time choosing the type of egg, usually within one minute. Every time I do not consider consciously as I have got used to what I have been buying (Morrison free range 6 eggs with mixed size). I would only take a look at the date of expiry and whether they are speical offers at the similar alternatives. Even after purchase I do not examine too much on their quality, instead I cook and eat them as usual.

Phone has been chosen as an example with high involvement of purchase. My last phone is Samsung Galaxy Beam, which I found it running not smoothly enough. When it was having more and more technical problem and I feel unsatisfied, I decided to buy a new one for my university life. I did go search at different mobile phone shops or electronics shops to see what models are available in the market. Afterwards I surfed the Internet to compare the functions of different models to see which one suits me the most. I even asked my friends and my parents for further advice. Finally I bought an iPhone 6 as it is user-friendly. I am satisfied with it when I use it afterwards.

The practice of buying egg can be classified as routine response behaviour, which need little search and decision...