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The purpose of this paper is to examine whether line extensions (modified brands) create their own loyalties or induce variety-seeking within the brand. Prior research has explored how the branded house strategy (i.e. multiple products bearing the same brand name) retains customers from competing brands. However, this research investigates loyalty within the brand by comparing loyalty and variety-seeking rates of modified brands.

Markov chains examine behavioral loyalty and switching rates of panel households in the USA over several quarters for two family brands of carbonated beverages. Emphasis is placed on the consumers who purchase the upper median of volume (heavy half) and constitute a disproportionate amount of brand’s sales (86 per cent of the volume).

Three propositions find that loyalty rates are high among modified brands with little switching to other lines within the brand. Further, loyalty and switch to rates are highest for the flagship branded product (the master modified brand).

Managers segment the market using the branded house strategy, yet loyalty rates vary for each product line. The switching rates can guide managers as to which products have established a loyal consumer base.

While brand switching is a considerable research stream, this research is believed to be the first to explore loyalty versus variety-seeking in the branded house strategy.

The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate both the relationships among brand satisfaction, trust and loyalty and the moderating effects of personality traits, namely, consumer innovativeness, variety-seeking and relationship proneness, in the context of fast-moving consumer goods.

Data were collected using a survey of 443 consumers. Structural equation modeling, specifically partial least squares regression, was used to test the theoretical model.

The findings indicate that brand loyalty is the most affected (both directly and indirectly) by satisfaction through the mediation of brand trust in both product categories studied. Moreover, variety-seeking behavior negatively moderates the relationship between brand trust and brand loyalty for fruit juices.

This research was conducted in the context of fast-moving consumer goods within a limited geographical region. Future research could apply this model to different contexts and countries.

Companies that produce fast-moving consumer goods are advised to consider the important role of satisfaction in the generation of trust, which leads to brand loyalty.

This study proposes and tests a theoretical model that is more comprehensive than the models used in previous studies because it investigates the relationships among satisfaction, trust, loyalty and personality traits. It is the first attempt to examine the moderating effects of consumer innovativeness, variety-seeking and relationship proneness on the relationship between brand trust and loyalty.

This study aims to enhance the understanding of impulse buying in grocery stores, where such purchases are pervasive and consumers face greater decision fatigue and diminished willpower than in more frequently examined retail environments. The intent is to demonstrate the influence of variables known to affect impulse buying in other environments on grocery shopping behavior, identify and profile segments that vary along those constructs and reveal how those segment characteristics help to explain impulse buying differences.

A purposive sample of 234 grocery shoppers approached at the point of purchase in a metropolitan area in Northeastern USA completed scales for theoretically derived variables and reported on their impulse purchases.

Anxiety, perceived financial pressure (PFP), novelty/variety seeking and shopping enjoyment positively influenced, whereas need for cognition had a negative effect on impulse-purchase activity. Two distinct segments of impulse buyers emerged: anxious and innovative shoppers. Anxious shoppers were higher in anxiety, PFP and compulsive buying, whereas innovative shoppers had higher levels of need for cognition and novelty/variety seeking.

The evidence for the dominance of anxiety and novelty/variety seeking as key motivators of distinct segments of impulse buyers in grocery stores is unique to this study. Results yield new insight on tension between the effects of motivational variables on the immediate impulse buying decision and post-purchase evaluation and add precision to marketers’ efforts to encourage spontaneous in-store decision-making.

Despite the growth of social networking websites as hybrid promotional tools, the empirical research that is currently available in explaining the consequences of gastronomy online reviews on ethnic food behavioural intention is limited. The purpose of this paper is to adopt a novel approach to explore Gen-Y tourists’ behavioural intention by proposing “involvement” as a mediator in improvising Wang et al.’s model. In other words, the more tourists enjoy reading gastronomy online reviews and gain benefits like inspiring taste desire, forming taste awareness and facilitating interpersonal interaction, the more they will become actively involved in searching gastronomy online reviews for ethnic food, subsequently manifesting in higher behavioural intention.

To test the research model, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to Gen-Y tourists in Malaysia using the purposive sampling technique. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling was applied to analyse the data collected from a sample of 748 responses.

This study provides empirical findings based on the direct relationship between gastronomy online review dimensions and the behavioural intention towards ethnic food. In addition, the indirect influence of the constructs for behavioural intention through involvement and the moderating effect of variety seeking were found. Indeed, when involvement increases as a result of reading online reviews, behavioural intention is enhanced. In fact, if the individual is a variety seeker, the behavioural intention could likewise be enhanced.

This paper provides suggestions and valuable insight for tourism authorities and ethnic food eateries in using gastronomy online reviews for promoting ethnic food and gastronomy tourism. For example, food eateries can motivate reviewers to include attractive and useful content by facilitating how the gastronomy reviewer retrieves information (e.g. ingredients, price, and food health value and food tradition) concerning the eatery. Additionally, rewards and incentives such as offering vouchers to reviewers in order to gain attractive and interesting reviews could be considered. Finally, the variety-seeking goal of tourists can be attained by relocating ethnic food restaurants or stalls at centralised or designated areas, where a variety of ethnic foods are conveniently accessible to tourists.

This paper systematically discusses how gastronomy online reviews influence the behavioural intention of tourists to taste ethnic food in the context of Malaysia. The inclusion of the mediator (involvement) and moderator (variety seeking) added a significant increment to the total variance explained in behavioural intention.

The purpose of this study is to explore the factors affecting the consumption intention of Chinese cuisines for the foreigners living in China. The study also explains the role of variety seeking behavior of consumers in the consumption intention of Chinese cuisines.

The quantitative data were obtained using a structured questionnaire that is based on Dalian, Liaoning province, of People’s Republic of China. A total of 305 responses were collected, and out of which, 282 were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that food novelty and utilitarian value are better predictors of consumption intention of Chinese cuisines. The food quality is also found to be significant with consumption of Chinese cuisines. The variety seeking behavior of consumers found to mediate the relationship of food quality, food novelty and utilitarian value with consumption intention toward Chinese cuisines.

The contribution made by the current study is twofold. First, the value of study lies in identifying the factors that are responsible for food consumption intention of foreigners in China, which is an overlooked area in the previous literature. Second, the study also establishes the role of variety seeking behavior of consumers in consumption intention. The authoritative construct of variety seeking behavior matches well with the context of the current study, as the Chinese cuisine is well renowned in the world for its wide variety. Further, the findings are valuable to the stakeholders of restaurant industry in guiding them on how best they can attract foreign consumers toward local Chinese cuisines.

Research on cross cultural differences in preference for variety is scarce. Such research is important because it addresses a marketing instrument for which substantial cultural variations are to be expected. This paper attempts to highlight relevant literature of the domains of cultural psychology as well as marketing psychology with a review to stimulate research. Furthermore, the objective of this paper is to point out specific research directions.

First, theories on variety perception and variety seeking are discussed in order to highlight consumers' benefits of variety. Second, theories of behavioral decision making are reflected and consumers' costs of variety are illuminated. Third, theories and results of cultural psychology are reviewed with regard to underlying psychological processes about consumers' reactions to variety.

This paper stresses several aspects. Initially, consumers' perceptions of variety differ from the actual variety provided by a manufacturer or retailer. Literature indicates that consumers' benefits and costs of perceived variety differ systematically across cultures. Independent consumers in individualistic cultures place a premium on choice, on variety seeking and on personal freedom. While they are attracted by large variety, current cultural theory suggests that they also encounter greater cognitive and emotional costs than individuals in collectivistic cultures when ultimately choosing.

This paper introduces a new and promising area of research and highlights relevant psychological as well as cultural psychological theories. Several research directions regarding customer reactions to variety are detailed.

Evidence has shown that the population is growing “increasingly gray” and growing too are the concerns for the elderly population with regards to their food choices. Being well informed and seeking variety in food choices increase the likelihood that people will be better nourished and hence improve the quality of life for this group, and at the same time be beneficial for society overall. The purpose of this paper is to determine the influence of social network usage on food choice.

This paper uses a series of logistic and ordinal logistic regression models using Health and Wellness Survey data and Internet Usage Survey data from the National Statistical Office of Thailand. The data sets contain information on health status, food consumption, proportion of population using the internet, and detailed demographics.

Empirical results show the association between variety in food consumption and lower probability of being chronically ill. More importantly, social network usage is found to significantly encourage variety seeking behavior (VSB) in food consumption.

Though the benefit of using Thai data sets lies in the fact that there is a large variation in network usage across the country, this study should extend beyond Thailand to establish greater external validity.

Marketing new food products must not neglect the promotion through social networks due to its potential to encourage VSB in food consumption. Moreover, while sometimes this particular age group may be somewhat marginalized and not targeted to enough, this research study has shown that it is indeed an important segment.

In order to relieve the growing financial burdens in health care for citizens, policy makers should encourage this ageing population to eat a balanced diet. Social media is shown to be an effective medium for promoting variety in food consumption. Notably relevance, engagement and emotion are principal elements for social network platforms targeting aging consumers.

This paper utilizes two large representative data sets with detailed information which does not only allow for controlled analyses but also provides implications for the growing aging consumer segment.

This study describes anti-consumption lifestyles and the effects of such lifestyles on the acceptance of commercial sharing systems (CSS). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the different types of anti-consumption lifestyles and their influence on consumer’s attitudes and purchase intentions toward CSS, and to verify the moderating effect of the variety-seeking tendency.

Structural equation modeling is used with data collected from 537 consumers. The chosen types of CSS are the corporations of Socar (a car sharing service in Korea) and Airbnb (a global accommodation sharing service).

The results indicate that the anti-consumption lifestyles consist of frugality, voluntary simplicity, environmental protection, small luxury and tightwadism; anti-consumption lifestyles affect the acceptance of CSS; and the effects differed according to the variety-seeking tendency. These results suggest that anti-consumption lifestyles differently influence consumer’s behaviors toward using CSS, and there is a moderating effect partially depending upon the variety-seeking tendency.

The contribution of this study is that it verifies the different types of anti-consumption lifestyles and their effects on consumer’s attitudes and purchase intentions toward CSS, which is an area that has remained unexamined in the literature. Marketers will be able to use the knowledge obtained herein on the various types of anti-consumption lifestyles to motivate consumers to use sharing services, and will also be able to establish a consumer strategy in sharing business practice.

Online auctions have attracted emotional shoppers through exciting shopping processes such as searching and bidding. The recreational and emotional worth of online auction shopping forces auction retailers to develop tailored strategies for their consumers. To this end, this study aimed to classify online auction shoppers based on their emotional shopping motivations and examine the relations of demographics (i.e. age, gender, income, and education) and psychographics (i.e. impulsiveness, variety‐seeking tendency, price sensitivity, and risk‐consciousness) to online auction shopper groups.

The data were collected via an online questionnaire utilizing a pre‐recruited consumer panel that had experience of online auction shopping during the past 12 months. Existing measurement scales were adopted and tested for validity and reliability in the processes of academic expert review, expert debriefing, the pretest, and the main study. The measures consisted of consumer psychographics (i.e. impulsiveness, variety seeking, price consciousness, and risk consciousness), emotional shopping motivations (i.e. adventure and gratification), and demographic variables. The analyses of the study proceeded in two stages. First, a cluster analysis uncovered auction shopper segments that emerged from the two dimensions of emotional shopping motivation. Second, regression analyses determined the predictive powers of demographic and psychographic variables in discriminating auction shopper segments.

The findings suggested that there were distinct auction shopper segments based on adventure and gratification shopping motivations. Four cluster groups showed significant differences in demographic characteristics of age and gender, and psychographic characteristics of impulsiveness, variety‐seeking tendency, and price sensitivity. The regression results provided information on predictive powers of selected variables (i.e. age, gender, impulsiveness, variety‐seeking tendency, price sensitivity, and risk consciousness) for different segments.

This study identified four online auction shopper segments and their differences in demographic and psychographic characteristics.

The present study is aimed at examining the antecedents of online shopping user behavior and customer satisfaction. More specifically, (1) the effect of social influence, variety seeking behavior, advertising and convenience on user behavior, and (2) the effect of user behavior on customer satisfaction are examined.

A conceptual model is developed and tested after verifying the psychometric properties of the survey instrument. Data were collected from 556 respondents from three major cities (Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore) in the southern part of India using structured instrument. Hierarchical regression is performed. Measurement model was checked using structural equation modeling (Lisrel package).

The results reveal that (1) social influence, (2) variety seeking, (3) advertising, (4) convenience, (5) trust and (6) product factors were positively related to online user behavior. Results also show that user behavior is significantly and positively related to customer satisfaction. The hierarchical regression results also showed moderating effects of (1) trust in the relationship between social influence, variety seeking and user behavior, and (2) product factors in the relationship between advertising, convenience and user behavior. Finally, results suggest that user behavior is partially mediating the relationship between trust and customer satisfaction, i.e. trust has both direct and indirect effect on customer satisfaction.

As with any survey-based research, the present study suffers from the problems associated with self-report measures viz., common method bias and social desirability bias. However, the authors attempted to minimize these limitations by following appropriate statistical techniques.

This study contributes to both practicing managers and the literature on advertising. The study suggests that trust and product play a major role in strengthening the relationship between antecedents and user behavior.

This study provides new insights about the importance of gaining trust in influencing consumer behavior. The conceptual model the authors developed is novel in the sense not many studies are available in India to empirically examine the moderating relationships of trust and product in consumer behavior.