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18/03/2018 09:36:57 PM

Four Modes of Consumer Decision Making

Consumers aren’t always deliberate and systematic as a decision-making sequence like the one above would suggest. The search time that people put into their purchases can vary dramatically for different types of products. The text elaborates on four decision-making modes that help advertisers appreciate the complexity of consumer behavior.

These four modes of consumer decision making are determined by a consumer’s involvement and prior experiences with the product or service in question.            

- Sources of Involvement

Involvementis the degree of perceived relevance and personal importance accompanying the choice of a certain product or service. Many factors contribute to level of involvement in any given decision.

a.   Interests and avocations, like cooking, photography, pet ownership, or exercise and fitness, can enhance involvement.

b.   When risk is associated with a purchase—high price of the item or because the consumer will have to live with the decision for a long time— elevated involvement is likely.

c.   Consumers can also derive important symbolic meaning from products and brands.

d.   Some purchases can also tap into deep emotional concerns or motives—like friendship or patriotism.

e.Involvement varies between product categories and between individuals

-  Prior experiences with product categories and brands is pretty self explanatory—the

 more experience, the more astute the consumer, and typically lower involvement.

- Modes of Consumer Decision Making                                                     

The ideas of involvement and prior experience produce four different types of consumer decision making. These four modes are shown in text Exhibit 5.10.

•     Extended Problem Solving.When consumers are inexperienced and the setting is highly involving, they engage inextended problem solving. Consumers go through  a deliberate decision-making process that begins with explicit need recognition, proceeds with careful internal and external search, continues through alternative evaluation and purchase, and ends with a lengthy post-purchase evaluation.

•     Limited Problem Solving.Experience and involvement are both low in limited problem solving. This is a common mode of decision making. A consumer will be less systematic. It is not a problem that is interesting or engaging, so information search is limited simply to trying the first brand encountered. Examples are low-cost products with some utilitarian value like the disposable diaper example on page 173 in the text.

•     Habit or Variety Seeking. Habit refers to buying a single brand repeatedly. This occurs where a decision is not involving and a consumer repurchases from the category over and over again. Convenience goods of all sorts represent this decision-making context. Variety seeking refers to the tendency of consumers to switch among various brands in a category in a seemingly random pattern. This is not to say that a consumer will buy just any brand; he or she probably has two to five brands that provide similar levels of satisfaction. However, from one purchase occasion to the next, the individual will switch brands within this set, for the sake of variety.

•     Brand Loyalty.This mode is typified by high involvement and rich prior experience. Consumers demonstrate brand loyalty when they repeatedly purchase a single brand. It is important to distinguish brand loyalty from simple habit. Brand loyalty is based on highly favorable attitudes toward a brand and a conscious commitment to find this brand each time. Conversely, habits are merely consumption simplifiers that are not based on deeply held convictions.

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