“The value of my most valued purchase”
The Compact Oxford English Dictionary denotes value as ‘the regard that something is held to deserve; importance or worth.’ Within this essay the term value will be discussed further in the terms of business and how it relates to my most valued purchase; The Bible.
Hollbrook (1999) elaborates on value stating it is more than the worth of the object but includes the experiences of the purchaser such as ‘effect (pleasing versus displeasing)...opinion (pros versus cons).’
When purchasing the Bible there were several motivations in relation to value that I can now identify by looking at my choice objectively. Initially I will look at value within the purchasing process then within the consumption process.
Theorists such as Holbrook, Hirschmann and Cacioppo discussed customers purchase decision making process being either cognitive processing, hedonic experiential (Holbrook & Hirschmann, 1992) or elaboration likelihood (Cacioppo, 1981). The Bible has been recorded as the bestselling book of all times, cited in Russell Ash’s book; Top 10 of Everything, although it is difficult to put a precise figure on how many have been produced, the Bible Society’s calculated a figure of 6,000,000,000 for the years 1816 to 1992. Therefore popularity of the book could be deemed a factor within the elaboration likelihood model as it relates to how we are persuaded. Furthermore there are several different translations of the Bible and my purchase was the Life Application Study Bible produced by Tyndale in the New Living Translation. This would lead into how consumer’s purchase decisions can be affected.
Within the marketing communication mix, my decision to purchase this pa ...