Construct · 3 names · 4 citations
Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.
● jangle · one drive, many model names Nearest construct by meaningvarietycompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to variety seeking is variety.
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The behaviour at the root of the construct: a person switches among brands or options not because the current choice has failed them, but because change itself is rewarding, so a satisfied buyer still reaches for something different next time. McAlister and Pessemier's 1982 Variety Seeking Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Review drew the key line between true variety-seeking, an intrinsic wish for change, and derived variety-seeking, which comes from outside factors like shifting needs, several users sharing a basket, or a wish to keep future options open. Kahn's 1995 Consumer variety-seeking among goods and services reviewed how the behaviour is measured in the marketplace. This is the marketing model of the drive, the same restlessness that the motivation and ecology traditions rename, observed here as switching in a purchase record rather than as a stimulation appetite or a mixed diet.[1][2]
The same drive read as a general property of a person: each individual is thought to prefer a certain amount of stimulation, and when the environment falls below that level the person acts to raise it, reaching for novelty, change, and exploration to restore the preferred level. Raju's 1980 Optimum Stimulation Level: Its Relationship to Personality, Demographics, and Exploratory Behavior built and validated a measure of this level and tied it to exploratory acts, including variety-seeking in consumption. Here the drive is located inside the person as a stable stimulation appetite rather than counted as switching in a market or watched as a varied diet in the field, but it is the same reaching for change that the other traditions describe.[3]
The same drive as it appears in animals feeding in the wild: a generalist forager eats a varied diet, moving among food types beyond what pure energy intake would require, so the mixing itself, not the failure of any one food, drives the switching. Bernays, Bright, Gonzalez, and Angel's 1994 Dietary Mixing in a Generalist Herbivore: Tests of Two Hypotheses tested why a grasshopper spreads its feeding across many plants and found that mixing improved growth and guarded against the toxins concentrated in any single plant. This is the drive named in behavioural ecology as diet diversification, watched as an animal's feeding record rather than as a shopper's switching or a questionnaire score, yet it is the same preference for change over repetition.[4]
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