Understanding Low Involvement and High Involvement

Hello everyone! Welcome to my first post for How Do We Buy, a blog dedicated to examining how we as consumers act in the purchasing world. In this post, we'll be discussing chapter 1, particularly the consumer decision process. 


It's a no-brainer that we as consumers have a decision process when it comes to buying goods. Whether someone is buying a Burger King Whopper or a designer Gucci purse, they will go through some sort of decision process. One might ask, Can I afford this item? How does it compare to other choices that I have? Where should I purchase this item? However, the amount of questions someone might ask themselves seems to differ depending on price of the product. For example, you might not have as many questions when you're buying a burger as compared to when you're buying a new car.

What all of this boils down to is the Decision Process of a consumer. We as consumers go through a different amount of steps depending on how high of an involvement we have with the item we are purchasing. Take a look at the following photo from Visual.ly:

As you can see, there are about 5 steps in this process, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we go through every step for every single purchase that we make. I'll use myself as an example to show you:

Today, I had to decide what I wanted to eat. When I got back to my apartment from class, my stomach was rumbling and I felt hungry. This is when I recognized that I had a need (step 1). From there, I went into my kitchen, looking around at what I had in the fridge and freezer, gathering information (step 2). I realized that I had ramen noodles, macaroni and cheese and a frozen pizza. I weighed the various ups and downs of each decision (what I craved, nutritional value, how hungry I was), effectively evaluating my alternatives (step 3). Although I may not have purchased my food (as I had already bought it), I did make a decision (step 4). After I heated up my pizza to sizzling perfection, I scarfed it down while I watched a funny podcast. I then thought about my decision. Was I full? Was I satisfied with that pizza? Would I buy it again? In doing this, I had a post-purchase evaluation (step 5). 

But wait. Didn't I just use all of these steps for something simple like lunch? Well, yes, I did. And didn't I say before that we don't always use all the steps when making simple decisions? Yes, I did say that. However, before you call me a liar, take my next example into consideration:

During my junior year of high school, I recognized that I needed to start thinking about where I would go for college. Obviously, this would be a huge undertaking. In all honestly, throughout my entire junior year and half of my senior year, I went through the processes of information search and evaluating my alternatives. It was only in my senior year that I finally had a well-informed decision for where I wanted to go, SUNY Geneseo. From there, I started my evaluation of my decision. Throughout my first semester at Geneseo, I realized that there were quite a few things that I did not like about the college. It wasn't near any major cities, the walk to class was long and had many hills, the food was bland and I really didn't have many choices when it came to what major I wanted to choose. From this evaluation, I realized that I was not happy with the decision that I had made, and this analysis prompted me to transfer to RIT. 

Both of these examples involved the decision-making process for myself as a consumer. However, like you may have noticed, one was quite a bit more involved than the other. Did I research every single brand of frozen pizza before I decided that I would eat the frozen pizza I did? No, I didn't. But I did research all colleges in my area before I narrowed it down to where I would go, spending quite a bit more time on the subject. I spent many months reviewing comments, prices and even scholarships. In essence, that's what it boils down to; how much time a consumer spends on a decision for a product (how long they spend on a step of the consumer decision process or if they use every step), which is called their level of involvement. As one might discern, my choice for lunch had a low level of involvement while my search for a college had a much higher level of involvement.

But why does this matter?

Because having this information in mind for low involvement purchases and high involvement purchases can completely change how you might market to individuals. To appeal to a student looking for a college, you're going to be listing many statistics on price, scholarships available, state of facilities, etc. but you wouldn't do the same for a frozen pizza. You may have various coupons available and nutrition facts on your site, but nothing on the level of information conveyed on a university website.

Having an idea of your consumer's level of involvement can really impact what advertisements you create and what information may be available on your company's website. That is why it's so important to take into consideration.