Chapter 3:

Involvement and
Perception
Consumer Behavior: A
Framework
John C. Mowen
Michael S. Minor
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  Practical
importance relevance
 Self-expressive  Purchase risk
importance
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

High Informational Ad

Ad Liking

Emotional Ad
Low

Low High
Need for Cognition
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.
High

Liking
AL
Low
Stimulus intensity
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.