Consumer decision making: process, level and style 125
the encoding of information and its rehearsal
are highly selective too. Many factors account
for the limited consideration sets (the range of
brands actively appraised) consumers’ decision
processes can encompass and the apparently
arbitrary processing they receive. Prior experi-
ence, personal circumstances, attitudes and
expectations, states of deprivation and motiva-
tion, and numerous personality dimensions can
all give rise to variation in the manner of
information processing (Kardes, 1994). The two
summary factors which we consider here are
involvement and cognitive style.
Consumers are motivated more or less
strongly to participate in the full information
processing sequence. Sometimes they feel a
need to reduce their uncertainty and risk by
seeking a broad spectrum of information and
evaluating it thoroughly before making a pur-
chase. On other occasions, they will telescope
the procedure, apparently muddling through
the decision as they call instantly on accumu-
lated knowledge and experience. More recently,
substantial attention has been given to one
aspect of the decision sequence which may
modify its form from situation to situation: the
level of involvement which the consumer feels
as he or she approaches the decision making
process. We discuss that aspect in this section.
Another factor is the style of decision mak-
ing shown by consumers. Even when two poten-
tial buyers go through all of the decision stages
outlined above, they may do so in quite distinct
ways, considering different information, a vary-
ing range of products, and fundamentally differ-
ent ways of solving their problems. Far less
attention has been paid to consumers’ decision
styles, though research in the last few years
shows how crucial cognitive styles are to under-
standing the entire decision process.
Levels of consumer involvement
Some products such as high performance cars
seem inherently involving because of their
complexity, risk and cost, while others such as
toothpaste seem uninvolving by comparison
because of their familiarity, low risk and low cost
(Laaksonen, 1994). In fact, while this is true in a
general way, involvement is actually a relation-
ship rather than a property of this or that
product or service. It reflects not only the degree
of uncertainty experienced by a consumer when
he or she is faced with consideration of a
product, but also the personal characteristics of
the consumer (some people find everything
more involving than others) and on the situation
in which purchase and consumption take place.
Involvement is commonly defined as the con-
sumer’s personal interest in buying or using an
item from a given product field, an approach
which nicely summarizes the individual, experi-
ential and situational components of the rela-
tionship. This is not the time to go into the
concept in detail (though the sources referenced
above will be a helpful starting point for those
who can) but to note its influence on the decision
making process.
One of the most prominent sources of
situational influence on consumer motivation
and choice derives from the newness of the
product under consideration to the potential
buyer (Howard, 1977). Although we speak
generally of new products being innovations,
such items differ markedly from the radically
novel – such as video recorders at the time of
their introduction – to the incrementally differ-
ent – an improved version of an established
brand of shampoo. Robertson (1967) cate-
gorized innovations in terms of the amount of
disruption they caused in existing consumption
patterns. Radically new products which had
maximal disruptive effect he termed discontin-
uous innovations. TV aerial dishes, supersonic
transatlantic travel and, in its day, television
itself all came into this category. Note that the
disruption involved is not necessarily a prob-
lem to be overcome: in the case of Concorde
flights it provided a much improved and
superior service for those who both needed it
and could afford it. Many new products are not
so revolutionary, though they still present