Exploratory Buying Behaviour Tendencies Scale

Abstract

The Exploratory Buying Behaviour Tendencies Scale (EBBT) is a landmark psychometric instrument developed by Hans Baumgartner and Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp (1996) designed to operationalize exploratory consumer behavior within commercial marketplaces. Grounded in the psychological paradigm of optimum stimulation level (OSL), the EBBT conceptualizes exploratory consumer actions not as a monolithic construct, but as two theoretically grounded, structurally distinct dimensions: Exploratory Acquisition of Products (EAP) and Exploratory Information Seeking (EIS). While EAP reflects an overt behavioral disposition toward variety seeking, brand switching, risk taking, and trial of unfamiliar commercial offerings, EIS captures an epistemic, curiosity-driven motivational tendency to gather product-related knowledge for the intrinsic pleasure of exploration rather than imminent transaction execution. The complete item pool encompasses 20 items (frequently administered across balanced 8-item or refined 5-item subscale operationalizations) measured on a standardized 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“Strongly Disagree”) to 5 (“Strongly Agree”).

Psychometric evaluations conducted across cross-national European samples (notably in Belgium and the Netherlands) and subsequent international validation studies have demonstrated outstanding psychometric robustness. Internal consistency estimates routinely exceed satisfactory thresholds, with Cronbach’s alpha values consistently falling between .80 and .89 for both subscales. Confirmatory factor analysis has corroborated the discriminant and convergent validity of the two-factor specification against generalized sensation-seeking inventories (such as Zuckerman’s SSS and Mehrabian and Russell’s change seeker measures), proving that consumer-specific exploratory scales explain significantly greater variance in marketplace choices, brand adoption rates, and browsing habits. The EBBT remains an indispensable instrument in marketing psychology, behavioral economics, consumer research, and decision-making science.

Keywords

Exploratory Buying Behaviour Tendencies, EBBT, Exploratory Acquisition of Products, Exploratory Information Seeking, Optimum Stimulation Level, Variety Seeking, Consumer Innovativeness, Sensation Seeking, Consumer Curiosity, Psychometrics

Authors

The scale was developed and validated by two prominent scholars in quantitative marketing and consumer psychology:

• Hans Baumgartner, Ph.D. — Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States. Dr. Baumgartner is widely recognized for his structural equation modeling expertise, research in survey response biases, and the conceptualization of consumer curiosity and emotional dynamics in judgment.
• Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp, Ph.D. — Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States (formerly affiliated with Catholic University of Leuven and Tilburg University). Dr. Steenkamp is an internationally renowned authority on global brand management, quantitative consumer modeling, cross-national research methodology, and emerging market strategy.

Purpose

The principal objective behind the creation of the Exploratory Buying Behaviour Tendencies Scale (EBBT) was to resolve an enduring theoretical and empirical limitation in consumer research: the reliance on broad, domain-general sensation-seeking and curiosity instruments to predict domain-specific commercial actions. Prior to Baumgartner and Steenkamp’s (1996) seminal investigation, consumer researchers predominantly utilized general personality metrics, such as Marvin Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-V) or Mehrabian and Russell’s Change Seeking Index (CSI). Although these foundational measures demonstrated adequate construct validity at the level of general human personality, they repeatedly demonstrated attenuated predictive validity when tasked with explaining concrete shopping activities, in-store navigation, impulse purchasing, and brand switching.

Baumgartner and Steenkamp recognized that consumer exploration manifests across two distinct psychological trajectories: sensory/behavioral stimulation through product trial and brand alternation, and cognitive/epistemic stimulation through curiosity-driven browsing and information search. Consequently, the EBBT was formulated to accomplish several vital purposes:

• Domain-Specific Granularity: To establish an ecologically valid, shopping-specific operationalization of optimal stimulation theory that directly incorporates commercial context cues (e.g., store environments, catalogs, packaging, brand performance risk).
• Distinction Between Behavior and Information Acquisition: To explicitly differentiate consumers who manifest exploratory impulses via physical market transactions (purchasing untried items, tolerating performance uncertainty) from those who express exploration through intellectual, sensory, and recreational information gathering (examining displays, reading consumer reviews, analyzing packaging).
• Market Segmentation and Target Profiling: To equip researchers and brand strategists with a sensitive diagnostic instrument capable of segmenting consumers based on innovativeness, early adoption readiness, brand loyalty vulnerability, and browsing recreational engagement.
• Refined Structural Modeling: To offer an empirical instrument free from construct contamination that integrates cleanly as either an antecedent, mediator, or moderator within structural equation models examining consumer decision pathways.

Psychological Construct

The exploratory buying behavior tendencies captured by the EBBT represent enduring behavioral and motivational orientations that dictate how individuals navigate commercial environments to regulate internal cognitive and sensory arousal. The instrument comprises two foundational constructs:

1. Exploratory Acquisition of Products (EAP)

Exploratory Acquisition of Products is defined as a behavioral tendency reflecting overt novelty seeking, brand switching, risk tolerance, and variety seeking in actual commercial transactions. Consumers scoring high on EAP actively prioritize the subjective utility of change, novelty, and variety over the deterministic utility of brand certainty, established quality, and routine satisfaction. Rather than purchasing purely to satisfy utilitarian requirements, high-EAP individuals leverage purchasing as a mechanism of cognitive and sensory variation.

Key behavioral hallmarks of EAP include:

• Novelty Purchasing: Purchasing newly launched items or unfamiliar product variants primarily to evaluate their properties rather than out of functional urgency.
• Spontaneous Variety Seeking: Alternating among competing brands within familiar product categories despite being satisfied with an existing choice.
• Tolerance of Performance Risk: Willingness to accept potential dissatisfaction with an unvetted product in exchange for the psychological stimulation of experimentation.
• Impulsive Trial: Unplanned transactions triggered instantaneously by the appearance of innovative packaging or unfamiliar brand options.

2. Exploratory Information Seeking (EIS)

Exploratory Information Seeking represents an epistemic, curiosity-driven motivational tendency directed toward the continuous acquisition of marketplace and product-related knowledge for its own sake. Unlike purposive, problem-solving search—which is initiated to mitigate immediate prepurchase uncertainty for a scheduled acquisition—EIS operates independently of buying intentions. It functions as an autotelic, recreational, and intellectually stimulating activity.

Key behavioral hallmarks of EIS include:

• Recreational Browsing: Perusing physical store aisles, window displays, mail-order catalogs, or online commercial platforms with zero intent to consummate an immediate transaction.
• Epistemic Exploration of Advertisements: Reading promotional materials, promotional flyers, and magazine advertisements purely to stay informed about product developments.
• Interpersonal Information Exchange: Actively soliciting anecdotes, opinions, and usage reviews from social circles regarding nascent technologies or brands.
• Consumer Education: Regularly consulting consumer safety reports, specialized blogs, and expert product comparisons driven by intrinsic epistemic curiosity.

Theoretical Framework

The EBBT is anchored in the theoretical foundations of Optimum Stimulation Level (OSL), originally conceptualized by psychological theorists including Donald Hebb, Daniel Berlyne, and Harry Fowler, and systematically introduced into consumer research by Steenkamp and Baumgartner (1992). OSL theory posits that every organism possesses an internal, homeostatically regulated preferred level of environmental stimulation. When external stimulation drops below this baseline, individuals experience boredom, monotony, and cognitive underarousal, activating exploratory behaviors designed to elevate internal arousal. Conversely, when environmental inputs exceed this threshold, tension and sensory overload occur, prompting individuals to engage in risk-reducing, familiarization, and withdrawal behaviors.

Berlyne (1960) distinguished between two overarching modes of exploratory activity:

• Diversive Exploration: Initiated when an individual is in a state of sensory understimulation or boredom. The organism casts a wide behavioral net to absorb novel sensory inputs, spontaneous variations, and environmental changes. In the EBBT framework, this is predominantly mirrored in the Exploratory Acquisition of Products (EAP) subscale, wherein brand alternation and impulsive product trial disrupt behavioral monotony.
• Specific Exploration: Driven by epistemic curiosity sparked by ambiguous, complex, or incomplete environmental stimuli, directing cognitive resources toward understanding and assimilating new knowledge. The Exploratory Information Seeking (EIS) subscale captures this cognitive regulation within the retail ecosystem.

By translating Berlyne’s theoretical architecture into market-specific behavioral dimensions, Baumgartner and Steenkamp demonstrated that consumers utilize commercial settings as dynamic sensory environments. An individual whose baseline OSL is systematically higher than the ambient environment will actively use the commercial marketplace as a vehicle for self-regulation, shopping not merely for material survival, but for neurological and psychological equilibration.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the EBBT have been extensively confirmed through rigorous classical test theory and structural equation modeling paradigms across numerous international contexts.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

In the original validation studies by Baumgartner and Steenkamp (1996), the authors verified that while EAP and EIS are positively correlated (typically exhibiting intercorrelations between $r = .35$ and $r = .55$), they demonstrate profound discriminant validity, establishing that exploratory purchasing and exploratory information gathering represent distinct mental processes. When modeled simultaneously in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the two-factor specification yielded a significantly superior fit compared to a single-factor unconstrained model ($\Delta\chi^2$ tests were statistically significant at $p < .001$).

Furthermore, EBBT demonstrated robust convergent validity with established general stimulation scales, correlating moderately and positively with:

• Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale Form V (SSS-V)
• Mehrabian and Russell’s Change Seeking Index (CSI)
• Pearson’s Novelty Experiencing Scale (NES)

Crucially, average variance extracted (AVE) values for both EAP and EIS consistently surpassed the .50 benchmark, and the square of the interconstruct correlation was systematically lower than the respective AVEs, satisfying the rigorous Fornell-Larcker discriminant validity criterion.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity has been empirically corroborated by examining the scale’s relationships with diverse consumer behavior criteria. Specifically:

• Early Brand Adoption: High-EAP individuals exhibit significantly shorter time-to-adoption latencies for innovative consumer packaged goods and disruptive electronics.
• In-Store Browsing Time: High-EIS individuals spend significantly more time engaging in store navigation, physical package inspection, and reading point-of-sale promotional collateral, independent of basket size.
• Impulse Buying: Positive correlations between EAP and validated impulse buying scales demonstrate that variety-driven consumers readily yield to immediate trial impulses.
• Brand Loyalty: EAP exhibits a robust negative association with true attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty, whereas EIS correlates with extensive consideration set sizes.

Reliability

Empirical investigations across diverse demographic cohorts, academic laboratories, and commercial testing scenarios demonstrate that the EBBT possesses exceptional internal consistency and temporal stability.

Internal Consistency

In Baumgartner and Steenkamp’s original foundational sample of Belgian and Dutch consumers, both subscales demonstrated strong reliability parameters:

• Exploratory Acquisition of Products (EAP): Cronbach’s $lpha$ estimates ranged from .80 to .86 across validation subsets; composite reliability ($CR$) values routinely exceeded .84.
• Exploratory Information Seeking (EIS): Cronbach’s $lpha$ estimates ranged from .82 to .88 across samples; composite reliability ($CR$) values routinely exceeded .86.

Subsequent psychometric evaluations across varied cultures (e.g., the United States, Germany, France, and East Asian samples) have supported these metrics, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients rarely dropping below .78 even in shortened 5-item or 8-item per dimension permutations.

Test-Retest Reliability

Longitudinal stability checks conducted across multi-week and multi-month test-retest intervals have yielded stability coefficients ranging from $r = .74$ to $r = .83$, confirming that exploratory buying tendencies reflect stable consumer dispositions over time rather than fluctuating situational states.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the EBBT was established using rigorous Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by multi-sample Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis

Initial principal components and maximum likelihood factor extractions with oblique (Promax and Oblimin) rotations across preliminary item pools consistently extracted two dominant eigenvalues greater than 1.0, accounting for substantial portions of total variance. Items corresponding to physical trial, brand alternation, and purchasing risk loaded cleanly onto Factor 1 (EAP), while items assessing window shopping, catalog browsing, and advertisement reading loaded onto Factor 2 (EIS). Cross-loadings across divergent dimensions were negligible, almost uniformly falling below .25.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Model Fit

In structural equation modeling analyses, the hypothesized two-factor oblique measurement model yielded excellent fit indices across diverse calibration and validation datasets:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Routinely observed between .92 and .97
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Typically exceeding .91
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Consistently spanning .045 to .062 (with 90% confidence intervals bounded below .08)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Falling below .050

Standardized factor loadings ($lambda$) for all retained items in both the 10-item and 8-item specifications are uniformly high and statistically significant ($p < .001$), typically ranging from .55 to .84, confirming substantial convergent validity at the individual indicator level.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Exploratory Buying Behaviour Tendencies Scale are structured as follows:

• Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report Questionnaire
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI), or mobile consumer survey
• Completion Duration: Approximately 4 to 8 minutes
• Total Item Count: 20 items in the full inventory (consisting of 10 EAP items and 10 EIS items; balanced 8-item and streamlined 5-item subscale forms are widely published and utilized)
• Subscales:
  • Exploratory Acquisition of Products (EAP) — Items 1 through 10
  • Exploratory Information Seeking (EIS) — Items 11 through 20
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Neither Agree nor Disagree, 4 = Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree)
• Scoring and Transformation Protocols:
  • Reverse-Scored Items: Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (within EAP) and Items 16, 20 (within EIS) are negatively keyed and must be reversed prior to computing aggregate scores ($1
    ightarrow 5, 2
    ightarrow 4, 3
    ightarrow 3, 4
    ightarrow 2, 5
    ightarrow 1$).
  • Subscale Score Calculation: Calculate the mean (or sum) of the respective items for EAP and EIS independently. Retaining separate continuous subscale scores preserves the distinct theoretical properties of each dimension. Averaged composite scores range from 1.0 to 5.0.
  • Interpretation: Higher scores on EAP reflect elevated variety seeking, risk acceptance, and propensity for immediate product trial. Higher scores on EIS indicate an active, intrinsically motivated appetite for commercial information gathering and exploratory retail browsing.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Exploratory Buying Behaviour Tendencies Scale was formally published in 1996 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marketing Research. Under academic fair-use conventions, the scale items and their structural configurations are open and accessible without royalty fees for academic, non-profit, educational, and scientific research endeavors, provided appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to Baumgartner and Steenkamp (1996). Commercial applications, including commercial market research platforms, proprietary marketing software integrations, or fee-for-service enterprise diagnostic batteries, may be subject to institutional publisher copyright permissions (American Marketing Association) and intellectual property agreements.

References

• Baumgartner, H., & Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M. (1996). Exploratory consumer buying behavior: Conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Marketing Research, 33(2), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379603300201
• Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, arousal, and curiosity. McGraw-Hill. https://doi.org/10.1037/11164-000
• Mehrabian, A., & Russell, J. A. (1974). An approach to environmental psychology. MIT Press.
• Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M., & Baumgartner, H. (1992). The role of optimum stimulation level in exploratory consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 19(3), 434–448. https://doi.org/10.1086/209313
• Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M., & Burgess, S. M. (2002). Optimum stimulation level and exploratory consumer behavior in an emerging consumer market. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 19(2), 131–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0167-8116(02)00063-4
• Zuckerman, M. (1979). Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of arousal. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Items of the Scale