The Effect of Social Support on Consumers' Variety Seeking

Social support is paramount to people's well-being. Yet little is known about how such support influences individuals' consumption decisions in retail contexts. This multi-method research featured five quantitative studies and showed that receiving social support can reduce consumers' variety seeking in subsequent consumption situations. Specifically, Studies 1A and 1B employed secondary data analysis, consistently revealing a negative association between social support and variety seeking. Studies 2–4 adopted experimentation approaches. Study 2 (N = 125) confirmed the proposed effect by experimentally manipulating social support. Study 3 (N = 299) shed light on the underlying mechanism by presenting a mediation model (i.e., social support → increased sense of satisfaction → decreased variety seeking). Besides, Studies 3 (N = 299) and 4 (N = 288) identified two moderators (i.e., individuals' trait gratitude and the chance to pay it forward) of the proposed effect.