High and Low Involvement Goods

High Involvement

A car would be a suitable high involvement good considering all the complex alternatives one needs to consider when deciding to purchase one. The product takes considerable time and thought of the consumer as they decide amongst the various options available to them. They try to gather as much information about different cars as possible before they reach a decision. This is made necessary because of the high capital value and the associated risk with buying the good.

Low involvement

A low involvement purchase would be buying any everyday product such as a pack of crisps. Choosing such a product takes less time because the customer has already made up his mind about what to buy even before entering the store thus it requires less research.

Consumer Model

For a high involvement model we go through the problem recognition stage, where we identify the problem, gather all the information regarding the price, alternatives available and the extent to which they solve the problem, evaluate all the possible alternatives and the finally choose one alternative and purchase the product. After the purchase we evaluate the purchase through its price, performance etc.

For a low involvement product, we don’t necessarily go through all the stages. These are routine items that are bought on a daily basis and therefore don’t require any considerable thinking. We might recognize a problem but would not gather information. Similarly we might not look for alternatives. After the purchase has been made we made, post purchase evaluation might not be considered unless we really strongly about it.

The Purchase Decision Process

The Purchase Decision Process that a customer goes through is a 5-stage process. It should be noted that due to the different involvement nature of various products, some stages might be skipped for some products while other products involve customers going through all the stages of this process. The five stages that...