High-Tech, Low-Involvement: Changing Consumers’ Search for Information

The internet has made it significantly easier for consumers to conduct an information search during the consumer decision-making process. Almost every household owns a computer and has access to the internet. This makes the internet highly accessible, hence information search is fast and convenient.

From the case study, Grace wanted to buy a toaster and it has became a priority for her. Buying a toaster used to be a low involvement process for Grace. Initially, she was not interested to spend much time and effort, and low price was the main factor in buying a toaster. However, internet offers both high and low involvement consumers a wealth of shopping information …show more content…

For example, in makeupalley.com, there are few users who commented on a product of Sally Hansen in short sentences. (Refer to appendix 1.2) These people post reviews for no real intention, they might just want to be involved in the reviews even though they do not exactly use the product, thus what they say have only a certain degree of accuracy.

In the same website, there could be two extreme rating. One might rate 1 out of 5, the other might rate 5 out of 5. Thus it is difficult for the other users to gauge the accuracy of the rating. For example, in download.com, there is a person who rated ICQ application 4 out of 5 while the rest either rate it as 1 or 2 out of 5. (Refer to appendix 1.3)

Some reviewers who are biased toward certain brand might only write positive reviews that support their preferred brand. What people perceive is subjective as it might not apply to all users. This reduced the level of trustiness of the review.

Independent Newspapers UK Limited indicates that ‘people are more likely to write about products they don’t like than the ones they do’ (2007,p.1). In addition, online reviewers might also be bias in writing whereby they only choose to write what they perceived as either good or bad, resulting in relevant details being left out. Hence online reviews are not trustworthy.

We reckon that people write reviews because they enjoy the high readership and response. For example