Consumer Behavior: A Framework

John C. MowenMichael S. Minor

Chapter 3:

Involvement and Perception

Information . . . . . .is the content of what is exchanged with the outer world as we adjust to it and make our adjustment felt upon it.. . . allows us to adapt to and even influence the world around us.

Information Processing . . .

. . . is the process through which consumers are exposed to information, attend to it, comprehend it, place it in memory, and retrieve it for later use.

Three Important Factors Influence Information Processing:

Perception Involvement Memory (Chapter 4)

Perception . . .

. . . is the process through which individuals are exposed to information, attend to the information, and comprehend the information.

Three Stages of Perception

Exposure stage - consumers receive information through their senses.

Attention stage - consumers allocate processing capacity to a stimulus.

Comprehension stage - consumers organize and interpret the information to obtain meaning from it.

Consumer Involvement . . .. . . is the perceived personal importance and/or interest attached to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of a good, service, or idea.

As involvement increases, the consumer has greater motivation to comprehend and elaborate on information.

Several factors influence the level of the consumer’s involvement: Type of product being considered; Characteristics of the communication

received by the consumer; Characteristics of the situation within

which the consumers is operating; Personality of the consumer.

Two Main Types of Consumer Involvement

Situational - Occurs over a short time period and is associated with a specific situation, such as a need to replace a product that has broken.

Enduring - Occurs when consumers show a consistent high-level of interest in a product and frequently spend time thinking about the product.

Involvement Has Multiple Dimensions:

Hedonic importance

Self-expressive importance

Practical relevance

Purchase risk

As Involvement Levels Increase: Consumers tend to process more in-

depth information General increase in arousal levels Consumers are likely to give more

diligent consideration to information relevant to the particular decision

More likely to be an extended decision-making process

Bottom Line on Involvement You must know the level of involvement

of your customers. Measure the level of enduring

involvement. May identify multiple consumer

segments. High involvement versus low involvement segments. Will target with different promotions.

High involvement segments may be early adopters.

Moderating Effects of Involvement

Ad Liking

High

Low

Low HighNeed for Cognition

Emotional Ad

Informational Ad

The Exposure Stage Exposure to a stimulus is the first

step in the processing of information. The sensory organs are activated and

the entire mechanism of information processing can begin.

Influencing a customer is done by exposing consumers to information through marketing communications.

Zapping, or channel surfing, with the television remote control is a problem for advertisers.

Industrial: blocked by secretary, messages not returned, etc.

The Study of Sensation . . .

. . . investigates the way people react to raw sensory information received through their sense organs.

Subliminal Perception . . .A. Refers to presenting a stimulus below the level of conscious awareness in an attempt to influence behavior and feelings.B. Does it work? parallel systems, so may impact broad emotions.C. Incidental learning is much more important.

The Just Noticeable Difference Threshold (JND) . . .A. . . . is the minimal amount of

difference in intensity of a stimulus that can be detected 50% of the time.B. Examples: changing size of package, changing taste, changing the quality of sound, or touch, or smell of product.

Weber’s Law and the JND Weber's Law states that as the intensity of

the stimulus increases, the ability to detect a difference between the two levels of the stimulus decreases.

JND--Just Noticeable Difference JND = Intensity X Constant (.20 rule of

thumb) How much to lower price of $20,000 car?

Is pricing JND? No!! Is “just meaningful difference.”

Consumer Adaptation . . .

. . . is the amount or level of the stimulus to which the consumer has become accustomed.

A reference point to which changes in the level of the stimulus are compared.

The Butterfly Curve . . . . . . is the idea that something slightly different may be perceived more positively.

AL

Liking

Stimulus intensity

High

Low

The Attention Stage Before consumers can comprehend

and remember information, they must first attend to it. Attention involves the allocation of

cognitive capacity to an object or task so that information is consciously processed.

The more demanding the task, the greater amount of attention will be focused on it.

Types of Attention Preattention is an unconscious process in

which consumers automatically scan the features of the environment.

Attention can be voluntary or involuntary. Selective attention is voluntarily selectively

focusing on relevant information. Orientation reflex is the involuntary reflex of

when something surprising or novel is presented one turns toward and allocates attention to it.

Capturing Customers’ Attention Goal is to activate

the orientation reflex by creating stimuli that surprise, threaten, annoy,or violate the expectation of consumers.

The Comprehension Stage . . .

. . . is the process in which individuals organize and interpret information

Perceptual organization is the way people perceive the shapes, forms, figures, and lines in their visual world.

Interpretation process is how people draw upon their experience, memory, and expectations to attach meaning to a stimulus.

Perceptual Organization Gestalt psychologists

attempted to identify the rules that govern how people take disjointed stimuli and make sense out of them. The anal retentive artist--Esher.

Interpretation . . .

. . .is trying to gain an understanding of something garnering our attention

Semiotics . . .. . . is the analysis of how people obtain meaning from signs

Signs are the words, gestures, pictures, products, and logos used to communicate information from one person to another.

Eskimo Joe’s—symbolizes cold beer and fun times. It’s t-shirts are reputed to be the 2nd best selling in the world after Hard Rock Cafe

Semiotics: Key Concepts Signs: words, gestures, pictures, and

other symbols that convey meaning. Use semiosis analysis to identify

meanings transmitted. Focus groups provide methodology. Cross-cultural: do back translations.