Basically consumer involvement is to understand the needs of your customers, you also need to understand what motivates them to purchase, and how you can influence the buying process to ensure that your products or services are on the shopping list.
Understanding your customers will help you to develop and distribute your product, as well as getting the right price point and developing successful promotional activities.
The psychology of the buying process has been widely studied, and no matter what size your business, knowledge of this process can help you become more successful.
Both businesses and consumers exhibit patterns of buying behaviour. The business model is less open to debate as your business customers will almost certainly have some formalised process of buying in place. Your task is to understand the process and match your marketing activities to the different stages of the process. This means that the customer will receive the right kind of contact at the right time.
There are many models of consumer buying behaviour, but the steps below are fairly common to most of them.
The customer identifies a need:
This is often initiated by PR coverage, including word of mouth. The customer may have seen a friend or celebrity using a product or service, or awareness may have been sparked off by advertising. (PR is public relations)
Looking for information:
At this stage the customer wants to know more and is actively seeking information. Advertising and PR are still important but product demonstrations, packaging and product displays play a role. This is the time to deploy your sales personnel, and customers find videos and brochures are useful. Word of mouth is still very important.
Checking out alternative products and suppliers:
The customer is now trying to