The influence of product involvement on consumers’ interactive processes in interactive television Shalom Levy & Israel D. Nebenzahl Received: 25 September 2006 / Accepted: 12 July 2007 / Published online: 13 September 2007 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract Based on the classical elaboration likelihood model, we develop an interactive communication behavior model and apply it to the interactive television environment. The model suggests a hypothesis about interactive information searches and how they are impacted by product involvement and hypotheses about how the category of an advertised product impacts the type of information sought. Testing these hypotheses empirically, we verify that product involvement influences the extent of interactive communication behavior, while the type of information being sought is a function of the advertised product category. Implications regarding advertising practice and research are suggested. Keywords Interactive advertising . Interactive television . Product involvement . Product category The recently introduced technology of interactive television (ITV) has led to significant changes in television advertising. This technology brings the familiar one-to-one, two-way communication capabilities of the Internet to television media, where the television screen replaces the computer monitor and the TV remote control acts like a mouse. In light of this technology, advertisements can now include icons. Using the remote control, the viewer can move a pointer to a desired icon on the screen and click on it to activate its corresponding software. In modern ITV programming, at the beginning of an advertising break, all viewers are exposed to the same ads. When a viewer clicks on an icon, his/her ITV enters the interactive one-to-one communication mode and the normal program stream is temporarily suspended for that viewer. While in this interactive mode, the viewer can flip Market Lett (2008) 19:65–77 DOI 10.1007/s11002-007-9020-3 S. Levy (*) Graduate School of Business, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel e-mail: levysha@mail.biu.ac.il I. D. Nebenzahl Ariel University Center of Samaria, Arial, Israel