Chowdhury, T. G., Ratneshwar, S., & Desai, K. K. (2009). The role of exploratory buying behavior tendencies in choices made for others. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 19(3), 517-525. link
The paper covers the concept of exploratory buying behavior tendencies (EBBT) as the consumer trait that is strongly associated with the variety-seeking behavior. The main question they address in the paper is: Can EBBT influence even choices made for others?
Factors examined in the study are:
- EBBT scores
- Diversity in consideration sets
- Search motives: utilitarian search motives vs. hedonic search motives
- Regulatory focus: promotion focus (when a decision maker strive to attain the outcome by means that are approach-oriented) vs. prevention focus (avoidance-oriented)
- Budget constraint
Findings:
- High EBBT individuals have salience of hedonic search motives and consequently form more diverse consideration sets.
- With a specific budget, high EBBT consumers are likely to diversify their gift choices by buying a greater number of relatively lower-priced items.
- The effects of EBBT traits are attenuated when the regulatory focus of the person making decision is one of prevention rather than promotion.
Takeaways:
- This work finds that the dispositional, an individual difference variable, EBBT trait can extend its influence beyond a person’s own consumption to situation, while previous studies have focused on the situational variables in variety-seeking behavior. This approach shares my argument that individual’s innate pattern in geographical and physical movement can explain and predict that person’s information exploration behavior when online searching.
- If I consider a user study examining individuals’ EBBT during the search task(s), I can use the methods describes here, such as:
- EBBT scores developed by Baumgartner and Steenkamp (1996)
- Survey asking participants to choose consideration sets
- Questionnaire that assesses the salience of henonic search motives
- Manipulation of regulatory focus adding different sentences in the end of scenario
Dongho Choi 