Involvement

Basic EKB decision model

• A five-step process for buying: Problem recognition > Information search > Evaluation of Alternatives > Product Choice > Outcomes
• We discuss elements of what can happen at each stage

Involvement

• How much time and energy is focused on a thing
• There are various kinds, we focus on involvement with a buying decision
• At low levels of involvement, the full buying process model (above) is not followed
• Consumers often have low Involvement in their decisions. Firms are often tempted to believe that their consumers have higher involvement than they do (after all, the firm is pretty involved, and we tend to imagine that other people think the same way that we do). This can lead to firms dealing with potential customers poorly

Systems 1 & 2

• A famous psychology theory – not the same as involvement, but related. Describes two psychological modes in which people can process information and make decisions
• System 1 is fast and efficient pattern recognition (where “pattern” can be nearly anything, from recognizing the letter ‘a’ to recognizing that “ask a friend” is a pretty reasonable tactic for solving many problems
• System 2 is slower and more deliberative thinking; it can be flexible and clever, but is hard work
• System 1 is the default that people generally try to use whenever they can – we discuss some factors that can push people towards using it through
• System 1 uses lots of handy consumer tricks: habits, skills, and heuristics
• These are often useful ways of getting through the world, but they have drawbacks too, that we discussed
• System 2 isn’t perfect either. It just has different strengths and weaknesses to system 1.
• System 1 and 2 often work closely together in complementary ways. It is NOT the case that any given problem has to choose one of them, and only one.
• One might need to do different things to learn about consumers’ motives, depending on which mode they are using