Consumers’ Product Knowledge and

Involvement

Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Chapter 4

4-3

• Consumers use different levels of product knowledge to interpret new information and make purchase choices

• How consumers form levels of knowledge

• No one level of knowledge captures all the possible meanings of an object, event, or behavior

Levels of Product Knowledge

4-4

• Four levels of product knowledge– Product class– Product form– Brand– Model/features

Levels of Product Knowledge cont.

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Levels of Product Knowledge cont.

4-6

Consumers’ Product Knowledge• Three types of product knowledge

4-7

Consumers’ Product Knowledge cont.

• Products as bundles of attributes– Attributes– Concrete attributes– Abstract attributes

• Products as bundles of benefits– Consequences

• Functional• Psychosocial

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Consumers’ Product Knowledge cont.

– Benefits• Bundles of benefits• Benefit segmentation

– Perceived risks• Physical• Financial• Functional• Psychosocial

4-9

Consumers’ Product Knowledge cont.• Perceived risk influenced by

– Degree of unpleasantness of negative consequences– Likelihood that negative consequences will occur

– Products as value satisfiers• Values

– Instrumental– Terminal– Core

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Means-End Chains of Product Knowledge

• Links consumers’ knowledge about product attributes with their knowledge about consequences and values

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Means-End Chains of Product Knowledge

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Means-End Chains of Product Knowledge cont.

• Four levels of means-end chain– Attributes– Functional consequences– Psychosocial consequences– Values

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Means-End Chains of Product Knowledge cont.

• Examples of means-end chains

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Means-End Chains of Product Knowledge cont.

• Identifying consumers’ means-end chains– One-on-one personal interviews

• Two basic steps involved

• Marketing implications

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Digging for Deeper Consumer Understanding

• Focus groups

• The ZMET approach to consumer knowledge

• The ZMET interview

• Marketing implications

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Involvement• Consumers’ perceptions of importance or

personal relevance for an object, event, or activity– A motivational state that energizes and directs

consumers’ cognitive and affective processes and behaviors as decisions are made

– Felt involvement

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Involvement cont.• Focus of involvement

– Products and brands– Physical objects– People– Activities or behaviors

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Involvement cont.• The means-end basis for involvement

– A consumers’ level of involvement or self-relevance depends on two aspects of the means-end chains that are activated

• Importance of self-relevance of the ends• Strength of connections between the product

knowledge level and the self-knowledge level

– Factors influencing involvement

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Involvement cont.

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Involvement cont.– Person’s level of involvement influenced by two

sources of self-relevance• Intrinsic• Situational

– What marketers need to understand• Focus of consumers’ involvement• Sources that create it

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Marketing Implications• Understanding the key reasons for

purchases

• Understanding the consumer-product relationship

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Marketing Implications cont.– Four market segments with different levels of

intrinsic self-relevance for a product category and brand

• Brand loyalists• Routine brand buyers• Information seekers• Brand switchers

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Marketing Implications cont.– Influencing intrinsic self-relevance– Influencing situational self-relevance

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Summary• Discussed the fact that consumers don’t buy

products to get attributes

• Learned that consumers think about products in terms of their desirable and undesirable consequences, benefits, and perceived risks

• Described how consumers form knowledge structures called means-end chains

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Summary cont.• Learned that consumers’ feelings of

involvement are determined by intrinsic self-relevance – the means-end knowledge stored in memory

• Discussed situational factors in the environment and how they influence the content of activated means-end chains and thereby affect the involvement consumers experience when choosing which products and brands to buy