High/Low Involvement

by  Kayla Holley, Taylor Kleimann, and Ashley Dickinson

Involvement is the level of importance or interest consumers have with different types of decision making. High involvement is a decision making process that leans toward active, or rational buying. Information is researched about the product before buying anything and it normally includes only expensive items. Consumers weigh decisions between a high quality-high price product and an average quality-low price product. Buying a car is an example of a situation that generates high involvement decision making.

Low involvement is a process excluding much thought. One small difference that someone sees as favorable will inspire his or her decision, for example, a difference in packaging or price. They are often similar products and alternatives are easy to come by. Low involvement products are fast-moving products such as detergent or chicken broth.

In our interviews we asked the interviewees what the last high-involvement product they have purchased, and what types of research did they do before making their final decision. We also wanted to see how one product could be a low-involvement product to one person but high-involvement product to another so we asked them if toilet paper was high-involvement or low-involvement to them. We found that some people cared about the quality of their toilet paper and some just wanted the least expensive.


Mr. Kleimann Interview




Brian Interview


When applying this theory to business applications, high involvement can have two types: rational and emotional. Rational products would be items such as a car or a new appliance. The advertising is usually copy driven with an explanation of the benefits and features. High involvement, emotional products would be things like a wedding ring or holiday travel plans. Advertising for these types of products or services would use images, music and copy to generate emotion.


Low-involvement products can be ones that are bought out of habit with not much thought in it at all. To persuade consumers to switch, advertising needs to be incentive driven with coupons or differentiation between their products and the competitor’s.

Team "Hi/Low Involvement"

Ashley Dickinson, Taylor Kleimann, Kayla Holley