Editor’s note: Mark Travers is an insights specialist at Burke, Inc., a Cincinnati research firm.
Most of us know variety as “the spice of life” or “the soul of pleasure.” For marketers and insights professionals the term has an even loftier connotation. It conveys a deep understanding of consumer behavior and serves as an end point for much of our research.
Understanding when consumers depart from routine and what motivates them to do so is a critical aspect of marketing planning at many consumer-facing companies. Imagine, for instance, that a toothpaste manufacturer is considering launching a new flavor of toothpaste. To be successful, this company must understand which types of customers tend to seek variety when they purchase toothpaste and, by extension, which consumer groups may be most likely to adopt a new flavor. Or consider an ice cream manufacturer interested in selling ice cream quarts that contain two flavors instead of one. To create the most enticing flavor combinations, the manufacturer must first understand which ice cream flavors customers are most likely to cycle back and forth between buying. This requires a nuanced understanding of the variety-seeking consumer.
Consumer decision-making
Variety-seeking plays a prominent role in the consumer decision-making process (all of us are variety seekers in at least some consumer categories) and has long been the focus of academic inquiry. Academics define variety-seeking as the “propensity to seek diversity in the choice of goods and services” and most of their research has been directed at understanding why people seek variety in the first place. Generally, researchers have landed on three broad explanations. The first is the most straightforward: consumers often derive greater pleasure from seeking variety than from simply buying the same product every time. In other words, we get tired of buying the same things and we are motivated to seek variety insofar as it increases the utility of our purchases.
But it gets more interesting from there. A second motivation – one that is rooted deeply in psychology – suggests that people seek variety as a means of impression management. That is, people believe that choosing a variety of items will be viewed more favorably by others than simply choosing the same item every time. In a sense, variety-seeking is viewed as a mark of sophistication and protects an individual from criticism that may arise from perceived attachments to single items. To this effect, there is research showing that people are more likely to purchase a variety of items in public settings (when being observed by others) as opposed to private settings.
Third, and perhaps most interesting, is the view that variety-seeking behavior is best understood as an affirmation of one’s sense of freedom and personal control. In other words, we seek variety simply because we can – and it feels good to exercise our freedom of choice through our variety-seeking behavior.
New research published in the Journal of Consumer Research offers additional evidence in support of this third perspective.
Researchers Sunyee Yoon and Hyeongmin Christian Kim tested the idea that individual differences in variety-seeking behavior could be attributed in part to socioeconomic status and perceived economic mobility. Their reasoning went something like this: because variety-seeking can help to affirm one’s sense of control, low socioeconomic status consumers who perceive low economic mobility (i.e., economically stuck consumers) tend to exhibit more variety-seeking purchasing than consumers who feel less economically stuck. In other words, variety-seeking purchasing is used as a means to compensate for consumers’ otherwise low sense of control.
Yoon and Kim designed a series of experiments to test this hypothesis. In one of their experiments, researchers asked an online sample of participants to allocate five purchases between five flavors of yogurt (Boston cream pie, apricot mango, red velvet cake, vanilla and lemon). They quantified variety-seeking as the number of unique yogurt flavors chosen. The researchers also measured participants’ socioeconomic status and their beliefs regarding economic mobility. Interestingly, they found that participants who were low in socioeconomic status and did not believe in economic mobility were more likely to seek variety in their yogurt choices than the other groups – presumably because what they lacked in economic control they attempted to make up for through their variety-seeking behavior.
The researchers replicated this finding in other choice domains (e.g., purchasing socks and chocolates) and in a field setting (selecting varieties of snack cakes at a mall):
“We show that ‘economically stuck’ individuals ... try to regain a sense of control by seeking variety in choices, as variety seeking, which increases a sense of agency, helps consumers compensate for lacking control ... Employing various target products (socks, yogurts, chocolates, popcorn and snack cakes) and diverse choice settings (forced, free, hypothetical and real settings as well as assortment choice), and using multiple data sources, we have obtained consistent support for our central premise.”
Reframing our understanding
This research is important for a few reasons. At a practical level it suggests to marketers that appealing to consumers with a wide variety of products may be more effective when aimed at low-income consumers and low-cost products – these, after all, are the consumer groups most inclined to exercise variety-seeking as a means of self-expression.
Second, and perhaps of greater importance, is the way in which this research reframes our understanding of shopping behavior in general. Most people tend to think of variety-seeking as a personality trait. For instance, we all know people who are creatures of habit, only purchasing the tried-and-true, and those who are chronic variety-seekers, seeking variety every chance they get. This research, however, suggests that variety-seeking behavior is driven by situational factors such as socioeconomic status as much as it is by personality differences.
Understanding the situational factors that promote variety-seeking in your category is critical to maximizing the impact of your marketing initiatives. Insights professionals would do well to keep this in mind when designing their next consumer study.
References
Yoon, Sunyee and Kim, Hyeongmin Christian. “Feeling economically stuck: The effect of perceived economic mobility and socioeconomic status on variety seeking.” Journal of Consumer Research, August 2017.
Kahn, Barbara E. and Ratner, Rebecca K. “Diversification motives in consumer choice.” Inside Consumption: Consumer Motives, Goals and Desires. Routledge, 2005.
Ratner, Rebecca K. and Kahn, Barbara E. “The impact of private versus public consumption of variety-seeking behavior.” Journal of Consumer Research, September 2002.