Emerging Consumer Perspectives on American Franchise Offerings: Variety Seeking Behavior in China*

Variety-Seeking Behavior in Consumption: A Literature Review and Future Research Directions

Variety-seeking is a popular choice strategy in consumers’ daily lives, and many factors influence it. This study conducted a narrative and structured literature review based on three popular online academic databases to understand how researchers used influencing factors, adopted theoretical perspectives and underlying mechanisms, and developed measure methods in their studies. This paper consolidated and analyzed 61 articles on variety-seeking behaviors in consumer research, including empirical studies spanning from 2000 to 2021. This paper primarily focused on articles published at top tiers in the marketing literature. From these articles, a collection of internal and external factors, theoretical perspectives, underlying mechanisms, and measure methods adopted was summarized and tabulated for easy reference and comprehension. A research framework was developed to illustrate the relationships between influence factors and variety-seeking proposed by previous researchers. The literature review may not be exhaustive because variety-seeking behaviors could involve various research topics; however, the proposed research framework and suggested directions may be representative references for future research. This study is a more comprehensive literature review of variety-seeking behaviors in consumption research after 2000, and it contributes to a better understanding of the causes and effects of variety-seeking behaviors in consumption.

Modeling customer satisfaction and revisit intention in Bangladeshi dining restaurants

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to provide an insight into the crucial antecedents of customer satisfaction and revisit intention in the context of dining restaurants in a holistic approach, taking Bangladesh as a unit of analysis.

Design/methodology/approach

The research design was cross-sectional. Data were collected from 30 dining restaurants in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. The proposed model was tested using partial least square structural equation modeling with a sample size of 600 respondents.

Findings

The antecedents of customer satisfaction (i.e. service quality, food quality, atmospherics, other customers and perceived value/price) were found to have significant positive effects on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction and restaurant reputation were found to have significant positive effects on revisit intention, while variety seeking tendency was found to have a significant negative effect on revisit intention. Trust was found to partially mediate the customer satisfaction-revisit intention and restaurant reputation-revisit intention relationships.

Originality/value

This study is among the first to provide a holistic approach toward the crucial antecedents of customer satisfaction (i.e. service quality, food quality, atmospherics, other customers and perceived value) and revisit intention (i.e. customer satisfaction, variety seeking tendency, trust and restaurant reputation) in one structural equation model, and investigated their interrelationships in the context of dining restaurants. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has investigated the mediating role of trust between the customer satisfaction-revisit intention and restaurant reputation-revisit intention relationships in the context of dining restaurants. From a market-specific context, this the first study to investigate and link the examined variables in the context of Bangladeshi dining restaurants.