Purchase of a High Involvement Product - Motivation and Decision Process

We decided to study and analyze the link between motivation, involvement and individual decision making accorded to the purchase of a laptop.

It was important for us to know what was the situation in UK of the laptop's market, in order to have a good basis for the report; actually, the market boomed since 2000 thanks to Internet, changing minds, fall of prices ,and so on, the increase of sales and the new trend of the laptop.

It was interesting for us to use the theories into practical, that is to say, to explain the theories of motivation, involvement and individual decision making in order to create a good questionnaire to administer to our sample of students from different countries, age and gender.

The theories are about the different kind of motivations (desire, needs, pleasure…), the "Hierarchy of needs" of Maslow, the individual decision making constituted by problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchasing process and post-purchasing behaviour.

The analysis of the enquiries has shown that even if the 5 students come from different countries, are women or men, they all have the same basic need: security need.

We tried to find the motivations and how they proceeded when they bought their laptop, from what stages they went through up to the final purchase. We used the 4P's of the marketing mix to understand and analyze better the questionnaires.

These students don't want to be disappointed of dissatisfied by the product because for them, a laptop is an high involvement purchase, that's why they did a lot of information researches before buying it, on the internet or circle (family, friends…).

The main features they wanted when they bought their laptop were globally: the hard disk capacity, memory, speed, design, form, image of the brand and quality of the product.

At the end, we made