Analyzing pork purchases at the point of sale – The role of consumer involvement

Involvement is an important psychological construct for understanding consumers’ underlying purchase decision process and those factors that shape product perceptions. In order to better understand consumer purchase behavior for low and high priced pork cuts, a series of field interviews at a variety of food retailers were conducted with actual pork shoppers using the New Involvement Profile (NIP) developed by Jain and Srinivasan (1990). In addition to responses to a series of questions designed to assess consumers’ involvement when purchasing pork, informational elements including socio-demographic information and pork attributes (e.g., origin, advertisement, on sale) were also included in the analysis. Key results from the study show individuals with high risk factors were significantly less likely to purchase high price cuts of pork. However this factor was mitigated by high price cuts on sale. Advertising is found to engage consumers with specific factors including those individuals who place a symbolic value on pork. Similar results are found for certain individuals based upon the type of store in which shopping took place. Results from our study may help companies to develop specific strategies to target high and low involved consumer segments. For instance, focusing on particular labeling schemes to increase consumers’ trust in meat producers could be used to target high involved shoppers. Additionally, based upon the empirical evidence this would have an added benefit by supporting the purchase of higher priced cuts of pork.