Effects of price promotions on variety-seeking and reinforcement behavior

A stochastic model is proposed to examine how changes in frequency of price discounts affect brand choice decisions of consumers who exhibit variety-seeking and reinforcement behavior. It is shown that the effect on choice depends on whether the brand offering discounts is a major or minor brand in the product category. This model extends the existing literature on stochastic models of variety-seeking behavior by explicitly incorporating switching due to promotions along with intrinsic switching due to variety-seeking. The model yields testable hypotheses which are supported in a laboratory experiment and on analyses of the IRI cracker data.