Page 196 - Marketing Management

ANALYZING CONSUMER MARKETS | CHAPTER 6 173

Oral B has tied toothbrush promotions to the springtime switch to daylight savings time.
Another strategy is to provide consumers with better information about either (1) the time they
first used the product or need to replace it or (2) its current level of performance. Batteries have
built-in gauges that show how much power they have left; toothbrushes have color indicators to
indicate when the bristles are worn; and so on. Perhaps the simplest way to increase usage is to learn
when actual usage is lower than recommended and persuade customers that more regular usage
has benefits, overcoming potential hurdles.
If consumers throw the product away, the marketer needs to know how they dispose of it, espe-
cially if—like batteries, beverage containers, electronic equipment, and disposable diapers—it can
damage the environment. There also may be product opportunities in disposed products: Vintage
clothing shops, such as Savers, resell 2.5 billion pounds of used clothing annually; Diamond Safety
buys finely ground used tires and then makes and sells playground covers and athletic fields; and,
unlike the usual potato chip maker, which discards some of the spud, Pringles converts the whole
potato into dehydrated potato flakes that are rolled and cut into chips. 72

Moderating Effects on Consumer Decision Making

The manner or path by which a consumer moves through the decision-making stages depends on
several factors, including the level of involvement and extent of variety seeking, as follows. Savers takes clothes consumers no
longer want and sells them to
LOW-INVOLVEMENT CONSUMER DECISION MAKING The expectancy-value
other consumers who do want
model assumes a high level of consumer involvement, or engagement and active processing the them—at the right price.
consumer undertakes in responding to a marketing
stimulus.
Richard Petty and John Cacioppo’s elaboration
likelihood model, an influential model of attitude
formation and change, describes how consumers
make evaluations in both low- and high-involvement
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circumstances. There are two means of persuasion
in their model: the central route, in which attitude
formation or change stimulates much thought and is
based on the consumer’s diligent, rational consider-
ation of the most important product information;
and the peripheral route, in which attitude formation
or change provokes much less thought and results
from the consumer’s association of a brand with
either positive or negative peripheral cues. Peripheral
cues for consumers include a celebrity endorsement,
a credible source, or any object that generates posi-
tive feelings.
Consumers follow the central route only if they
possess sufficient motivation, ability, and opportu-
nity. In other words, they must want to evaluate a
brand in detail, have the necessary brand and prod-
uct or service knowledge in memory, and have suffi-
cient time and the proper setting. If any of those
factors is lacking, consumers tend to follow the
peripheral route and consider less central, more
extrinsic factors in their decisions.
We buy many products under conditions of low
involvement and without significant brand differ-
ences. Consider salt. If consumers keep reaching for
the same brand in this category, it may be out of
habit, not strong brand loyalty. Evidence suggests we
have low involvement with most low-cost, frequently
purchased products.
Marketers use four techniques to try to convert a
low-involvement product into one of higher