Human Behaviour - High and Low Involvement Buying

Human Behaviour Assignment - MK1002

1. Explain the differences between high and low involvement buying. Show how your advertisements reflect these differences.

High and low involvement buying is the process in which the consumer goes through to fulfil their needs from the purchase they are making from their desired product and/or service. The level of high and low involvement can vary from consumer to consumer depending on how much value or worth it is to them "Depending on the value and personal interest, a consumer can have a high or low involvement" (Reference - Khan, Matin). A consumer's behaviour can change from low to high involvement through different actions or changes in their lifestyle, e.g. one day a woman may not be interested in the type of shampoo she would want to buy, which would be low involvement as the shampoo has less priority to her needs; but the week after she may have visited the hairdressers and may now have been appointed a shampoo she needs to use, so her priority for the correct shampoo has higher involvement, the woman's needs for the shampoo have now become more of a priority and her attitude has changed towards the product. This shows when the woman has had her hair done she has a higher involvement because the decision becomes more complex, she spends more time and effort evaluating her decisions and this becomes more of an importance to her than before she had her hair done.

There are two different types of high and low involvement for each, high involvement emotional/rational and low involvement emotional/rational.

Customers go through 5 stages before they purchase their product this is called the 5 stages of buying, the diagram below shows the 5 processes involved in the purchasing.

Source - (Tutor2u)

Most consumers who would be buying from Acorn Stair lifts would have a high involvement in their buying behaviour; the reason being is they would be looking for an easier way to satisfy their needs for mobility. The consumers would have it on a high priority list, evaluating all the different marketing competitions for stair lifts, the consumer's attitude and values would be of greater importance to them for the benefit of their health, they would input more time and effort for getting the correct stair lift to satisfy their needs. "For high involvement services, the consumer considers more attributes" (Reference - Laroche, Michael)

Consumers buying groceries from such places as Tesco's would normally have a low involvement as it is more impulsive and not much consideration is being taken into buying the product. People would have less interest in what they are purchasing and would have less train of thought on looking for alternatives, "for low involvement services, where by definition, the consumer does not engage in intensive decision making and considers a few attributes" (Reference - Laroche, Michael)

2. Identify the market segments being targeted by your advertisements.

There are 4 different types of segmentation:

Geographic segmentation - "geographic segmentation calls for dividing the market into different geographic units such as nations, states, regions, countries, cities and neighbourhoods" (Reference - Principles of Marketing), geographical segmentation is used in marketing to find the most profitable areas such as higher income areas will most likely pull in more profit than lower income areas. The next segmentation is demographical

Demographic segmentation -"Demographical characteristics are sex, age, marital status, number and age of children, place of residence and mobility of household" (Reference - Principles of Marketing), demographical segmentation is used in marketing research to show who are the key buyers, such as Weight Watchers has found their key buyers were middle aged women through demographic segmentation.

Behavioural segmentation - "This comprises a wide range of behavioural measures including consumer attitudes, knowledge, benefits sought by the consumer, usage rates and response to a product" (Marketing Higher Education: Theory and Practice, Reference). This helps companies such as Weight Watchers with what is more effective recipes for foods or their ready meals etc.

Psychographic segmentation - "buyers are divided into different groups on the basis of social class, lifestyle and personality characteristic's" (Principles of Marketing - Reference). Psychographic segmentation is about what class you are, lower, middle, upper, lifestyle how you distribute your money, how you spend your time and personality characteristic's shows what type of person you are often companies get feedback from their customers via surveys for this type of information.

Acorn Stair Lifts has segmentation according to the age group of 65+ and also gaining from the life-cycle perspective of demographical segmentation, the population statistics for the UK over the age of 65+ in mid-2009 was 16% (reference). Acorn Stair lifts also looks at the different lifestyle segments of people in the UK for mobility problems so they also have a market segment for mobility impaired people, "the most commonly-reported impairments are those that affect mobility" (reference), the statistics in the UK for mobility impaired people in mid-2010 were 10% (reference). The main niche market segment for Acorn Stair Lifts is demographically life cycle and age, and for psychographic is lifestyle.

Weightwatchers has a broad range for their market segment,

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