Introduction
The creation of brand awareness to the consumers is very important since consumers must first be made aware of the in order to buy it (Rossiter and Percy, pp.374). Brand awareness is created and enhanced by increasing its familiarity among the consumers through repeated exposure, which ultimately results in consumers having had a test of the brand product (Keller, 2003, pp.14). When consumers increase their knowledge of the brand by seeing, hearing or thinking about it, the brand will stick in their minds and the more likely to purchase it. Therefore brand awareness is the first vital phase in the consumer’s preparedness to build up a brand liking and move closer to the position of acquiring it.
Automobile for instance is considered as a high involvement product. Consumers often buy a vehicle for its symbolic meaning, image reinforcement or psychological satisfaction. A vehicle brand is also known to reflect the consumer’s social life, aspirations, fantasies and affiliations. Consumers, however, also buy low involvement products such as milk. Although the consumption of milk is less subject to the influence of peers and family, branding is still important as brand awareness alone could lead to the consumer choosing a product based on the familiarity of the brand (Keller, 1993, pp.21).
There is a great relationship that exists between brand awareness and consumer willingness to purchase the product (Rossiter & Percy, pp. 383). When the consumer can easily remember a product, the higher the purchase intention and the more likely the purchase of the brand. This means that those brands on top of consumer mind, have the highest possibility of purchase, and the consumer can easily remember the brands for the low involving products for instance milk; this is because they are easily to remember but high involvement products is very hard to remember especially the specification of a product, this makes it to have a rank compared to low involvement goods and services.
The Means to an End Perspective
People tend to purchase good and services not because of their attributes but because of the end benefit obtained from that specific good or service. For example, an individual might not be quit interested in the purchase of a Mercedes Benz which is a high involvement product, but might reason as follows, this kind of vehicle is highly reliable, it will stay in its original condition for a longer time, eventually others will start appreciating the make and eventually consumers will purchase it which leads to self esteem.
The important thing in this chain is that the consumers look first at an attribute of a product which is a concrete feature of the good or service, and after that rationally progress to a succession of results that end with a value being satisfied (Kaiser, pp.34).
Attitudes
Consumer attitudes are made of many things for example, they are made of beliefs, feelings and the way they behave also differs especially towards a product within the context of marketing. A buyer might have a belief which is positive in a certain product for example milk tastes good or a particular make of a vehicle is very comfortable, as well as negative beliefs for example milk is easily spilled and stains papers.
When a consumer has got a positive attitude towards product, he tends to like it and purchase it eventually, and this applies in both high and low involvement products. For instance, customers will purchase a particular kind of milk just because of where it is made or how it is made, also a consumer will purchase a vehicle make depending on the attitude he has for that company making the vehicle or the origin of that automobile.
Consumers always hold certain feelings toward brands or other products. Some of these consumers base their feelings on the various beliefs for example a consumer will feel nauseated when thinking about milk from Africa for the reason of the incredible quantity of fat it has.
Perception
The consumer’s perception is the way they view the different products in the market. Their thinking tries to establish sense from the external force for instance advertisements to which they are exposed. Several crucial factors influence consumer’s way of viewing products in the market. One of the factors is exposure; it involves the extent to which the consumers encounter an external driving force that urges them to purchase a product. For example, we are exposed to many commercial advertisements while driving on the highways.
The majority of the advertisements are normally random we don’t plan to get them out. However, if we are buying a car, we may eventually ask out for an advertisement and moved when seller advertisements come on the electronic media. Then from there we perceive that particular car as the best among available brands. Therefore perception plays a major role in high involvement products than those of low involvement products and a case at hand is when planning to buy a vehicle, the more advertisement a consumer gets to see makes him convinced about the vehicle he wants to buy. This also applies to the low involvement products but not to that extent. When a consumer goes out to buy milk he will buy putting less consideration on the advertisement of the milk he has information about the milk already.
Flow of Improvement
The dispersion of improvement refers to the performance of new market products, the practices, or the ideas to spread among people. Most of the time, when the new products and ideas develop, they are only taken up by a small group of people initially but later, many multiples spread to other consumers of the same product.
Initially a product is introduced in the market and very few people know bout it. For instance a new vehicle in the market is new and its price is very high, this means that very few consumers go to purchase it, therefore sales are very limited. But item for consumption are expected to go through a life cycle when it reaches a growth phase its sales increase since many customers of the product are aware of it and there are market adjustments of product provider.
There the product life cycle is influenced by the occurrence of dispersion of improvement. Whilst a new product is innovated, it is easily preferred by those consumers who are more adventurous and easy going, since it will be a new product in the market they will be ready to purchase it even if it is expensive, this action is mostly for the high involvement products, these kinds of consumers take risks of unproven technology. It is very important for a consumer to be on the alert and more outgoing in order to discover a new product on the market. Such consumers have first hand information than their others who will rely go for advice from people who are perceived to be more informed about the new good and services.
For example in the case of any automobile in most parts of the country which is low involvement product, the saturation level is very low compared to the high involvement product like milk, this is because the rate of diffusion of innovation in low involvement products like milk is very fast so many people get to know the importance of the product. This also implies that the level of innovation diffusion on a high involvement product is very low; consumers tend to take their time to purchase the product.
Work Cited
Kaiser, S.B. The Psychology of fashion: Figurative Appearances in Context. New York: Macmillan, 1998.
Keller, K.L. “Initializing, Quantifying and administration of Buyer-based brand impartiality”. Journal of Marketing 57 (1993): 21.
Keller, K.L. Tactical Brand execution: structuring, Measuring and controlling Brand Equity. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2003.
Rossiter & Percy. “Understanding brand awareness: let me give you a clue!” Advances in Consumer Research 20 (1993): 374-383.