Clearing the Conceptual and Measurement Confusion between Enduring Product Involvement and Product Importance: A Critical Review and Empirical Evidence (Published)
Consumers’ arousal and concern in the product is a reflection of its perceived self expressive and hedonic values, which are the main components of enduring product involvement. Many previous studies have confirmed the existence of these two components of enduring involvement and pointed out that most of the other components that were mentioned in past studies were either confused with involvement antecedents and behavioural outcomes, or were implied and included in the hedonic and self expressive dimensions of enduring involvement. Other misconceptions of the components of enduring involvement included the consideration of some situational and purchase decision factors as components of enduring involvement, as well as the adoption of the product importance concept as an equivalent or a component of enduring product involvement. The present study provides the theoretical and empirical evidences to prove that product importance is an outcome, rather than a component, of enduring product involvement.
Keywords: Consumer Behavior, Discriminant Validity, Enduring Involvement, Hedonic Consumption, Measurement Scale, Product Importance, Self-Expression.