In an attempt to organize the research findings that pertain to the various phenomena which have been termed "variety seeking" we offer a taxonomy of varied behavior. Within that framework the literature is reviewed. A TAXONOMY OF VARIED BEHAVIORThe phenonema of interest in this paper are those mechanisms which lead individuals to engage in varied behaviors. We include switching among product variants, switching among service alternatives, switching among various activities, etc., under the umbrella of "varied behaviors." A taxonomy of 2 explanations for such varied behavior is presented in Figure 1.- Figure 1 About HereThe taxonomy suggests that there are two basic schools of thought concerning varied behavior. One school considers such behavior to be either inherently inexplicable or, if explicable, to be so complex as to render it operationally inexplicable. This school focuses research on the probabilities with which different behaviors will be enacted.The other school of thought tackles the chore of explanation. We divide the explanations into two classes: those which view varied behavior as the result of some other motivation (DERIVED), and those which view variation as a -2 motivation in and of Itself (DIRECT). Motivations from which varied behavior

Marketing executives are being urged to speak in the language of finance to gain internal support for marketing initiatives. Responding to this call, the authors examine the impact of a firm's advertising and its research and development (R&D) on the systematic risk of its stock, a key metric for publicly listed firms. They hypothesize that a firm's advertising and R&D expenditures create intangible assets that insulate it from stock market changes, lowering its systematic risk. They test the hypotheses using a panel data on 644 publicly listed firms between 1979 and 2001, consisting of five-year moving windows. They scale the firm's advertising and R&D expenditures by its sales. After controlling for factors that accounting and finance researchers have shown to be associated with systematic risk, the authors find that advertising/sales and R&D/sales lower a firm's systematic risk. The article's findings extend prior research that has focused primarily on the effect of marketing initiatives on performance metrics without consideration of systematic risk. For practice, the ability of advertising and R&D to reduce systematic risk highlights the multifaceted implications of advertising and research programs. The article's findings may surprise senior management, some of whom are skeptical of the financial accountability of advertising programs.

This paper presents a model of individual consumer choice for separate choice occasions. Contrary to the notion that each choice is essentially independent of its predecessors, dependence is proposed as the key to variety-seeking behavior. As an individual's consumption history evolves, the pattern of attribute accumulations changes, leading to preference for items rich in different attributes at different points in time. The model is operationalized using soft drink consumption diaries, and predicts choices better than a model that ignores choice dependence.

Evidence suggests that some consumers react to promotion signals without considering relative price information. We adopt Petty and Cacioppo's Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explain this behavior in terms of the ELM's peripheral route to persuasion in which the promotion signal is taken as a cue for a price cut. Experimental results show that low need for cognition individuals react to the simple presence of a promotion signal whether or not the price of the promoted brand is reduced, but that high need for cognition individuals react to a promotion signal only when it is accompanied by a substantive price reduction.

Customer equity and brand equity are two of the most important topics to academic researchers and practitioners. As part of the 2005 Thought Leaders Conference held at the University of Connecticut, the authors were asked to review what was known and not known about the relationship between brand equity and customer equity. During their discussions, it became clear that whereas two distinct research streams have emerged and there are distinct differences, the concepts are also highly related. It also became clear that whereas the focus of both brand equity and customer equity research has been on the end consumer, there is a need for research to understand the intermediary’s perspective (e.g., the value of the brand to the retailer and the value of a customer to a retailer) and the consumer’s perspective (e.g., the value of the brand versus the value of the retailer). This article represents general conclusions from the authors’ discussion and suggests a modeling approach that could be used to investigate linkages between brand equity and customer equity as well as a modeling approach to determine the value of the manufacturer to a retailer.