Editor's note: Mark Travers is an account executive at marketing research firm Burke, Cincinnati.
Here’s a fun hypothetical to ponder. Imagine that there are two versions of yourself – self No. 1 and self No. 2. Self No. 1 wakes up at 8 a.m., gets in the car and drives to the grocery store to buy some yogurt. Self No. 2 also drives to the grocery store to buy some yogurt but leaves for the store later in the day, around 2 p.m. Holding everything else equal, which version of yourself do you think is more likely to purchase a wider variety of yogurt flavors?
If you guessed self No. 2, you’d be right. According to new research published in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers’ desire to seek variety in their product and flavor preferences increases as the day wears on. This insight holds far-reaching implications for consumer insights and market research practitioners.
To come to this conclusion, researchers examined supermarket shopping data of over one million households, spanning 25 months. They developed a metric for variety-seeking in the yogurt category by dividing consumers’ number of unique yogurt flavors purchased by the total number of yogurts purchased. Values closer to one indicated high variety-seeking; values closer to zero indicated lower variety-seeking. They then plotted this variety-seeking metric over hours in the day and found that variety seeking was lowest early in the morning and rose steadily throughout the day, plateauing at about 2 p.m.
Why? The researchers attributed the finding to the effect of sunlight. They suggest that variety-seeking behavior is more pronounced when consumers are “physiologically aroused,” and that sunlight is a natural stimulant of physiological arousal. To test this explanation, the researchers compared variety-seeking purchases in summer months (when there is more exposure to sunlight) to winter months. They found, convincingly, that variety-seeking is more pronounced in summer months.
They ruled out alternative explanations such as differences in shopping basket composition and size by time of day, as well as potential differences in weekday versus weekend shopping trips. They reported, “… empirical analysis of supermarket shopping behavior of more than one million households over 25 months and controlled experiments, demonstrate consistent diurnal variation in variety-seeking. Variety-seeking is lower in the morning than the rest of the day. […] Consistent with circadian changes in physiological arousal, the effects were moderated by light…”
Purchase behavior
This research adds another data point to our growing understanding of variety-seeking consumer purchase behavior. Past research, for instance, has shown that lower income shoppers tend to seek more variety in their purchasing habits than higher income shoppers. In one experiment, researchers at the University of Buffalo and Johns Hopkins 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 behavior 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 other groups – presumably because what they lacked in economic control they attempted to make up for in 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).
The research on sunlight and variety-seeking behavior offers another vantage point from which to understand variety-seeking purchase behavior. Unlike socioeconomic status, which varies from person to person, the effect of sunlight in stimulating variety-seeking appears to be universal. It also suggests a novel mechanism – namely, physiological arousal – that contributes to variety-seeking behavior. Mechanisms that have been theorized to influence variety-seeking include pleasure-seeking, impression management and, in the case of socioeconomic status, affirmation of one’s sense of freedom and personal control. Continuing to explore individual and situational predictors that promote or inhibit variety-seeking purchasing will ultimately allow marketers to better understand and cater to their customers.
Implications for MR
So, what does all of this mean for marketing research practitioners? For one, it suggests variety-seeking purchase behavior is more than just a personality difference. Instead, there is a physiological underpinning that dictates variety-seeking behavior in all consumers. So, appealing to consumers with a varied versus single set of products should be done strategically – especially among companies operating at scale. For example, advertisements that speak to consumers’ variety-seeking instincts might be more effective if viewed in the afternoon or evening.
Restaurants would be wise to offer more product variety on their lunch and dinner menus than on their breakfast menu. Food manufacturers should study what time of day (and year) consumers are buying their products to gauge the optimal amount of shelf variety. And retailers might want to offer more variety in categories consumers tend to purchase later in the day (e.g., alcoholic beverages vs. coffee). And, as shown by the studies on economic status and variety-seeking, these types of insights might be especially applicable to low-cost goods.
Most importantly, it suggests that companies, especially those operating in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) space, need a clear point of view when it comes understanding and marketing to their variety-seeking consumers. Companies cannot lump together variety-seeking behavior with non-variety-seeking or creature of habit behavior as they will be missing a key behavioral dimension that, when understood, can drive sales. For instance, one way to optimize shelf sets and product portfolios given what we know about variety-seeking behavior is described in an article published in Quirk’s, “Using turf to find something for everyone.” This type of analysis is predicated on the acknowledgment that variety-seeking behavior is an important behavioral dimension – something that academic literature has repeatedly shown. Beating this drum at your organization, especially if you work in the FMCG space, will advance customer insight and could lead to some big wins on the shelf.
References
Gullo, K.; Berger, J.; Etkin, J.; Bollinger, B.; and Morales, A. C. “Does Time of Day Affect Variety-Seeking?” Journal of Consumer Research. 2018
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.