Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the informational role played by an intermediary in the service industry. Design/methodology/approach – The paper used survey and choice data collected from agents and customers, respectively, in the hotel industry. Findings – The paper shows...

This research marries scanner panel choice data of consumers in single member households to their survey-based perception data and draws upon behavioral and modeling research to contribute to the variety seeking literature. It presents a new consumer-based measure of choice variety based on...