Page 188 - Marketing the Basics 2nd

180 Marketing: the Basics
but you do it out of habit or your body at some subconscious level lets you know you are thirsty. As long as there’s a Coke available, you’re probably going to skip the information search stage, since you decided in the past, that Coke satisfies your need. Now if you find yourself in front of a vending machine without Coke available, then you may have to think about what to buy or ignore your craving completely. As far as post-purchase behaviour or buyer’s remorse is concerned, short of finding a mouse in the can, you will rarely if ever, think about your purchase of a Coke. To help us understand this contradiction, we can usefully divide the world into two types of products (marketers love to divide the world into two!): low and high involvement. Low involvement goods, Coke in the previous example, are ones which we don’t think much about, we don’t search for additional information, we generally buy on autopilot and we rarely feel buyer’s remorse. They are generally regular repeat purchases and often are inexpensive. Once we settle on a choice we stick with it.
High involvement goods, on the other hand, tend to be infrequent purchases, are often expensive and we actively seek out information in order to make a better decision. A house or car, for most of us, are high involvement goods. An important aspect of high involvement goods from a marketer’s viewpoint is that consumers are more apt to experience buyer’s remorse with high involvement goods. It is part of most people’s human nature to wonder if we made a mistake after making an important decision. Clever marketers recognize this truth and often follow up right after the sale or soon after with a message that reinforces the wisdom of the purchase in buying what they did. At IBM sales school, sales agents are taught to take the customer to lunch after they signed a multimillion-dollar computer contract. During the meal, the agent reminds the client the reasons they bought the product to encourage the client to realize they did in fact make the right decision. This may sound less than subtle but when done well it is quite effective. Research has shown that the most attentive viewers of new car ads are people who just bought the same car – they are seeking reinforcement that they got it right!