2.3.1 Introduction to Involvement
The concept of involvement originated in the field of social psychology (Sherrif, 1965).
Krugman (1965) first brought and applied the involvement concept into marketing. Involvement has been one of the most frequently studied issues in advertising and consumer research (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981; Zaichkowsky, 1985). Greenwald and Leavitt (1984) suggested involvement as a process, whereas Andrews, Durvasula, and Akhter (1990) have conceptualized it as a state.
Involvement has been defined by its antecedents as well as by its consequences (Andrews, Durvasula, and Akhter, 1990). Involvement has often regarded as one of the important moderator that determine purchase decisions (Celsi and Olson, 1988). Several studies (Bloch,1983; Mittal and Lee, 1989; Muehling et al., 1993) has focused on pre-purchase settings in the context of decision making and advertising, with little attention being given to the construct as it affects consumer behavior on an enduring basis. In short, involvement refers to the degree to which a person perceives a product to be personally relevant (Zaichkowsky, 1985). In other words, involvement is relevant to consumers and it dominates consumers how to think and how to do.
O’Cass ( 2000) investigated that the level of involvement is assumed to change only to the degree that changes in the consumer’s value system occur on an enduring basis as a result of interaction with a stimulus and environment. Krugman (1965) argues that under high involvement, a communication affects cognitions, than attitudes, than behavior, whereas under low involvement a communication affects cognitions, than behavior, than attitudes. That is to say that under high involvement conditions, the focus of thought is on the content of the persuasive message, whereas under low involvement conditions, the focus of thought is on non-content cues (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981). An extensive review of the literature led Vakratsas and Ambler (1999) to conclude,” different people respond to different advertisements in different ways, depending on their involvement.
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2.3.2 The Classification of Involvement
Krugman (1965) asserted that involvement with advertisement as understanding a consumer’s involvement level or response after receiving advertising information based on a consumer’s concern about advertising information. In conceptualizing involvement, Zaichkowsky (1986) and Bloch and Richins (1983) viewed involvement as having three major antecedent factors-person, stimulus, and situation. One or more of these factors could affect the level of involvement with the stimulus in context of involvement with products (Hupfer and Gardner, 1971), with advertisements (Krugman, 1965), or with purchase situations (Clarke and Belk, 1978). Based on the above-mentioned, Zaichkowsky (1985) identified three major groupings of involvement and has labeled these as: product involvement, advertisement involvement, and purchase involvement.
Product involvement means to lead to greater perception of attribute differences, perception of greater product importance, and greater commitment to brand choice (Howard and Sheth, 1969).
Advertisement involvement leads one to give more counterarguments to the advertisement (Wright, 1974). Purchase involvement leads one to search for more information and spend more time searching for the right selection (Clarke and Belk, 1978).
However, Zaichkowsky (1985) only stressed the classification of involvement, but ignored the interrelationship among product involvement, advertisement involvement, and purchase involvement. Mittal and Lee (1989) argued that product involvement is an antecedent to purchase decision involvement. O’Clas (2000) followed this viewpoint and extended to include purchase decision, consumption, and advertising involvement .He revealed that product involvement was the exogenous construct and consumption, purchase decision and advertising involvement were the endogenous constructs in the relationship. The findings displayed in Figure 2.1.
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Figure 2. 2 the route from Involvement
Adapted from A. O’Cass (1999), “An assessment of consumers product, purchase decision, advertising and consumption involvement in fashion clothing,” 2000, p. 566.
2.3.3 Influence of Product Involvement on the Effectiveness of Product Placement
Product involvement research concerns the relevance of the product to the needs and values of the consumer. Several research investigated the differences in low and high involvement behavior (e.g., Belk, 1982; Bowen and Chaffee, 1974; Lastovicka, 1979; Lastovicka and Gardner, 1978b;
Robertson, 1976; Tyebjee, 1979). Zaichkowsky (1985) concluded those findings about what composed the differences between having high or low involvement in a product. Under the low involvement situation, researchers (e.g., Belk, 1982; Bowen and Chaffee, 1974; Lastovicka, 1979;
Lastovicka and Gardner, 1978b; Robertson, 1976; Tyebjee, 1979) proposed:
1. A relative lack of active information seeking about brands 2. Little comparison among product attributes
3. Perception of similarity among different brands 4. No special preference for particular brand
Consumption
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As mentioned above, people with low product involvement would have less enthusiasm to search information and inactively to receive messages about product. Zaichkowsky (1985) pointed that high involvement consumers should be more interested in acquiring information about the product than low involvement consumer. Studies examined that consumers engage in more information processing as their level of involvement with a product class increases (Celsi and Olson, 1988). On the other hand, highly involved consumer would search for more information about the respective product class, would be more receptive, and would be more knowledgeable about it.
Their grater interest and knowledge leads highly involved consumers to talk more about a product class than other consumer groups (Florian, 2007).
Numerous studies have found that high involvement increases memory for message information (e.g., Gardner, Mitchell, and Russo, 1985). Terry and Scott (1992) proved that higher involvement led to better memory. Ray et al. (1973) describe high involvement in terms of their
"learning hierarchy," in which a communication directly produces cognitive change that can in turn produce attitude change and then behavior change. Moreover, high involvement increases the number of consumer’s own thoughts generated in reaction to a persuasive message (Greenwald, 1968). Cowley (2008) investigated that viewers with higher involvement in program were more likely than those lower involvement in program to remember prominent placement. However, Chaiken (1980) and Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann (1983) have demonstrated that peripheral cues, like the credibility and attractiveness of the source, have a much bigger impact on persuasion under low-involvement conditions.