Attention, Interest, Search, Action, Share
Attention: This means capturing our attention and making us stop—for example, through an interesting cover design, exaggerated advertisements, salespeople shouting promotional pitches, or sensational clickbait headlines. Their primary purpose is to attract attention.
Interest: This means sparking our interest and keeping us engaged. For example, questions and points of resonance at the beginning of certain advertisements, the opening performance of a theatrical troupe, or trailers released before a film premieres may highlight the most exciting elements and bring up what we care about, fear, anticipate, or even feel anxious about, thereby arousing our interest.
Search: Active searching—this is when our interest is piqued and we start to take the bait. At this stage, what merchants need to do is make it easier for us to remember them and help us make up our minds. For example, can they set up memorable, distinctive keywords? Are offline purchase channels easy to find everywhere? Do product attributes like features, efficacy, packaging price, and barriers to use have any highlights?
Action: Taking action—this is when we're about to place an order. At this stage, merchants need to consider how to encourage us to purchase. For example, does the discount look substantial? Should they make the offer limited-time or limited-quantity, or run a flash promotion, or throw in some free gifts?
Share: Sharing—this is when we promote and show off on the merchant's behalf. If the product a merchant designs has social appeal built in, so that we show it off voluntarily, that's a huge success. If not, they might consider offering some small perks to get us to post reviews. In short, this stage is the most important one. It determines whether the merchant can use us to attract more people into the AISAS model and achieve a virtuous cycle, instead of relying solely on the merchant's own struggling efforts.
AISAS is a model rebuilt around the characteristics of the new media era. Why call it rebuilt? Because there was already a mature theoretical model in the field of consumer behavior.
The AIDMA model: in traditional marketing, the five stages consumers go through are Attention, Interest, Desire, Memory, and Action. But with the arrival of the internet age, our lifestyles and pace of consumption have changed. Inner desires and the memories that needed to be formed have been replaced by the internet's more convenient search and architecture, and everyone can share their experience with a product online, so user sharing has a greater marketing effect than in the past. Based on this shift, Desire and Memory were replaced by Search, and Share was added, restructuring the model into AISAS.
Viewed from the perspective of the larger consumption system, this model has another logic: driving reverse flows through interpersonal influence. In other words, crowds gathering around something can catch our attention; things many people are searching for can spark others' interest; and things friends have just bought may lead me to search their shares, causing follow-the-leader purchases within small circles.
Precisely because these reverse flows exist, many merchants design tactics around them. For example, organizing queues on the street can arouse more people's attention; buying trending searches on platforms can spark more people's interest; recommendations from opinion leaders can get their fans to place orders without thinking; and in the comments sections of outfit-sharing posts by ordinary people, there's always a crowd waiting for the product link. Through this model, merchants can draw inspiration to play clever tactics, boost consumption, and revitalize sales in tough times. We consumers, by understanding it, can see through some merchants' tactics, consume rationally, and save what we can in difficult times.