Before you can decide whether your product is a high or low involvement product you need to understand what a high or low involvement product actually is!
These definitions are taken from LEGAmedia:
High involvement products - products for which the buyer is prepared to spend considerable time and effort in searching.
Low involvement products - Products which are bought frequently and with a minimum of thought and effort because they are not of vital concern nor have any great impact on the consumer's lifestyle.
The marketing strategies for these products are very different. For a low involvement product all you need to do is merely make sure your product is available and easy to find, a perfect example is point of sale marketing – such as with gum, sure you might have your favourite gum, but if you can’t find it you’ll just by whatever’s right in front of you. No real point in spending vast amounts of your marketing budget trying to explain why yours is the only gum the client should by rather butter up the sellers to place yours at the top of the pile!
A high involvement product is a different story all together. Let’s say your product is a specific motor vehicle, here the client is going to spend a considerable amount of time looking around and investigating the pros and cons before investing a large sum of cash into a vehicle. Here you’re gonna spend a decent proportion of your budget on developing brand loyalty and explaining why your make stands out above your competitors.
Involvement level is often directly related to cost to client, yet this is not always the case; shampoo, which is a fairly inexpensive product, can be a high involvement product for woman as their fear of a bad hair-day surpasses the decision to just buy what’s available; they will often spend loads of time looking for their particular trusted brand. Crazy.
Some marketers even add another dimension here – emotional and rational, have a look over a blog entry written by Ad Cracker on consumer involvement theory.
Once you’ve decided where your product lies move onto the buying process.
