Consumer Behavior

Cognitive Processes:

Information Search

and Product Adoption

In this chapter, we'll learn about the series of stages of product adoption and consumer's search for information in detail.

Adoption Process

- is series of stages that consumers go through, beginning with an exposure to a product and ending with a commitment to repeatedly buy and use the product.

High level of involvement (decision making) - that consumers are viewed as being very concerned about the product that they are searching for more information to evaluate the product properly.

Low level of involvement (decision making) - purchase decisions are relatively unimportant.

Salesperson vs Advertising

Advertising is used primarily to create awareness of the product and provide a limited amount of information about the product.

Sales person are used to educate customers further about the benefits of the product and to influence them to make favorable evaluations.

Measuring Communication Effectiveness

Recognition test - consumers are shown a magazine or series of television ads and asked to indicate which ads they recognize as having seen and read.

Day after recall - after a new commercial is shown, company contacts a sample of consumers who viewed the television program in which the advertisement appeared. These consumers are asked to ascertain whether or not they saw the portion of the program in which the commercial appeared, and whether or not they recall a commercial for the specific type of product. Next, they are asked to recall the actual content of the commercial. these responses are analyzed to determine if consumers actually saw the commercial and importantly, if they correctly recall the brand name and advertising content. The commercial's effectiveness is measured in terms of a day-to-recall score, which states the proportion of all consumers exposed to the advertisement who are able to recall at least part of it correctly.Recognition versus Recall

To recognize an advertisement, consumers need only to discriminate among an number of advertisements presented to them.

Recalling an advertisement is much more difficult because consumers must reconstruct the content from memory.

Information is a critical factor associated with the movement of consumers through the adoption process. Consumers typically do not engage in extensive information searches prior to adoption. They rely on information they have actively acquired before making a specific purchase.