A Research On The Effect Of Time Perspectives On Consumers’ Variety Seeking Behavior

Variety seeking is the consumption behavior of choosing different options in a time interval or product category,which is an important way for consumers to cope with hedonic adaptation and meet their needs for stimulation.However,consumers’repeat purchases and maintaining consumer enjoyment of the product are crucial to the long-term survival of a company.Therefore,the study of variety seeking has been an important topic of research in the field of consumer behavior,which has received a lot of attention from scholars and has obtained many research results.An important factor in influencing consumer variety seeking is repeated exposure to stimuli,such as repeated consumption of the same product,or even simply repeated viewing of product images.Repeated exposure to the same stimuli over a period of time will lead to decreasing enjoyment of the product,which will result in consumers’ switching purchasing behavior.In order to increase revenue and reduce costs,companies offer customers price discounts for buying products in bulk,and various full discount strategies have emerged,with 20% off for two pieces and 30 RMB off a total of 300 RMB.However,these promotional strategies increase the purchase of the same product by consumers,which may accelerate their hedonic adaptation to the same products.Consumers seek variety of products in order to cope with hedonic adaptation.What are the factors and mechanisms influencing consumers’ variety seeking behavior are the main questions to be addressed in this study.This research includes three sub-studies that examine how time perceptions affect consumers’ variety seeking behavior.This research examined the moderating role of different social factors.Study 1 examines consumers’ variety seeking behavior in terms of their sense of repetition.In reality,many people view their lives as repetitive.Through literature review process,this study identified two metaphors of time that can be used to represent people’s perception of repetitive life patterns.Consumers’ time perspective can help them reflect on their daily lives,whether their lives are full of change or extensively repetitive.Repeated consumption of products brings consumers with a sense of satiation and hedonic adaptation to products,which in turn increases their tendency to seek variety.Thus,Study 1 aims to explore whether the sense of repetition derived from the time perspective may have a similar effect on consumer variety seeking behavior.In addition,how people’s variety seeking changes after they experience the threat of ontological insecurity,and the extent to which people are negatively affected by the threat of ontological insecurity vary across time perspectives.Study 2 examines the mechanisms by which time perspectives influence consumption variety in terms of how time perspectives affect people’s hope.The different extent of change that people experience from their time perspective will affect their expectations of obtaining good outcomes in the future.How consumers’expectations about the future affect their variety seeking behavior is the research question of Study 2.Moreover,according to previous research,people’s perceptions of the possibility of obtaining better socioeconomic status in front of widespread,growing income inequality are inconsistent.Some studies have found that people view income inequality as an opportunity to achieve higher incomes in the future,while others indicate that people are overestimating the chances of gaining economic mobility in the future through their efforts.People’s attitudes toward income inequality influence their willingness to support government redistributive policies.Study 2 attempts to explore the difference in the effect of income inequality on people’s hope for becoming better in the future,and variety seeking behavior when people were primed with different time perspectives.Study 3 explores people’s perceptions of the temporal distance of future events when they are in different time perceptions,and how it affects the extent of variety seeking in consumption.The different movements way of the two time perspectives affects people’s perception of the temporal distance of future events,and temporal distance is an important factor influencing consumption variety.An increase in perceived temporal distance can lower consumers’ preference for product variety.Study 3 explored the moderating role of uncertainty in people’s perception of temporal distance and the impact on variety in consumption.Uncertainty is a state of lack of information about the occurrence of future events,and uncertainty often brings some negative emotions to people.However,the use of uncertainty as an incentive in business promotions often achieves better marketing effects than deterministic promotions.This study also attempts to explore the positive role of uncertainty in consumer behavior,and analyze how uncertainty affects consumers’ variety seeking behavior.Based on optimal stimulus level theory and compensatory control theory,the research hypotheses of the three sub-studies were derived by reviewing the previous literature.A total of eight experiments were conducted to test the research hypotheses of the three sub-studies.It was found that people in the cycle time perspective preferred a variety of products compared to consumers in the linear time perspective,and people’s self-continuity preference,hope,and perceived temporal distance played a mediating role in each of the three sub-studies.When people experienced threats to their ontological security or faced uncertainty about the future,their preference for product variety decreased,and this negative effect was greater for consumers in the cycle time perspective.Income inequality undermines people’s positive illusions about achieving a better future life,and people attempt to compensate for the lack of control by consuming a variety of products.The negative effect of income inequality on consumers is greater for those in the linear time perspective rather than those in the cycle time perspective.The theoretical contributions of this research are concluded in the following.This research represents people’s lifestyles through linear time and cycle time metaphors,exploring the mechanisms of the effect of two time perspectives on consumer variety seeking behavior.Thus,this research introduced a new research perspective on consumer variety seeking behavior.It also extends the research findings of time perspective in the field of consumer behavior.Study 1 found the moderating role of ontological security in the influence of time perspectives on consumers’ variety seeking,expanding the research on ontological security in the field of consumer behavior.The manipulation of ontological security through new social contexts provides new empirical research material for the research on ontological security.Study 2 found that time perspectives influence people’s hope for the future.The lack of research on the direct effects of time on emotions was filled.The findings suggest that for people lacking hope,consumers’ variety seeking behavior acts as a compensation,thus reinforcing the findings of compensatory consumption behavior.In addition,the findings of Study 2 contribute to the understanding of people’s complex attitudes toward income inequality.This study finds that income inequality has a negative effect on people’s perceptions of achieving upward socioeconomic mobility in the future,and that this negative effect on consumers varies according to their time perspectives.Thus,the findings extend the research of income inequality on different socioeconomic status groups to people with different time perspectives.Study 3 identifies differences in the effect of time perspective on people’s perceptions of the temporal distance of future events,strengthening the research on the optimal stimulus level and consumption variety seeking.Moreover,the moderating role of uncertainty in the effect of time perspective on consumption variety was examined,and a positive effect of uncertainty on consumers was found.Unlike previous research in which uncertainty rewards the satisfaction of consumer curiosity and positive expectations.In Study 3,uncertainty plays a positive role in mitigating hedonic adaptation by influencing people’s perceptions of the temporal distance,and the findings provide new perspectives for research in the positive effect of uncertainty.The findings have some practical implications.According to the findings of this research firms can influence consumers’ preferences for variety by arousing different time perspectives of consumers according to their strengths and weaknesses in product variety.Since people with different time perspectives show different vulnerabilities to ontological insecurity,governments can provide different care and relief to people with different time perspectives in helping them get recovery from disasters.In addition,time perspective also affects people’s beliefs about future socio-economic mobility,and variety consumption can act as compensation for people who lack hope for the future.Companies can adopt appropriate variety marketing strategies according to the extent of inequality in different areas.The positive effect of uncertainty on repeat purchases can be adopted in corporate marketing communication to promote consumers’ repeat purchases.Future research could further explore the effects of two time perspectives on other consumption behaviors.More longitudinal empirical studies may be carried out for the research on consumers’ variety seeking.Consider consumers’ consumption order and time interval,and gain more data on consumers’ actual purchases to enhance the research of variety seeking through different data acquisition methods.This study found a compensating role of variety seeking for people who lack hope for achieving a better economic income in the future.Future research could explore more compensating consumption behaviors,such as probabilistic marketing and customization.Future events are predictable under the cyclical time perspective,yet climate issues that derive from global warming affect people’s routines and the cyclical growth process of crops.Future research could consider the impact that climate change may have on the consumption behavior of people with different time perspectives.