Abstract:

Consumers' involvement in products considerably moderates their reactions to marketing and advertising stimuli. Involvement has now gained the status of a major parameter to be taken into account in advertising and marketing strategies. Current practice and theory measures involvement by a single index. Empirical data, based on more than 3500 interviews, across more than 20 product categories, show that involvement is not a single dimension but should be thought of as a profile of 5 dimensions. Knowing only one dimension is insufficient to catch the full dynamics of the relationship of consumers to products, and to predict consumer behavior. The involvement profile is an enlightening new tool for describing consumers, product categories and for segmenting markets.