Abstract: Marketing analysts have shown that some consumers' purchase behavior can be characterized as variety-seeking, i.e., a tendency to shift away from the last brand purchased. Consumers seek variety for many reasons. Generally, most manufacturers indirectly sell products through decentralized and usually independent retailers, i.e., the manufacturers firstly supply products to retailers, and then the retailers sell the products to consumers. However, if these retailers or the third-party distributors cannot deal with the consumers' variety-seeking behaviors efficiently, selling through them may have a negative impact on the manufacturers' profits. A three-stage Hotelling-type model incorporated the classical strategy of supply chain versus supply chain competition. Then, what is the impact of variety seeking to the equilibrium channel structure is discussed in following two situations: 1) the retailers are same, but one manufacturer will bear bargain cost or entry fee if sold through the retailer, 2) the manufacturers are same, but the operating expense of one retailer is not free.

Key words: variety seeking, channel structure, Hotelling models, supply chain competition, operating expenses