Omnivorism Impact on Consumer Choice: the Case of Book Market

While previous studies were concentrated on the investigation of omnivores’ representative socio-demographical characteristics, the present research analyzes the omnivorousness degree impact on consumer choice in the book market. Panel Scanner data for time period from 2012 to 2015 were provided by a Saint-Petersburg chain store. The final sample was restricted by 10789 purchase occasions made by 3709 loyal clients in 2015. We assessed ominivorousness degree through the use of purchase histories of various genres books. Then mixed multinomial logit model was employed to control for unobserved differences in preferences. The analysis revealed that consumers in the book market are highly heterogeneous, and this is partially explained by their omnevorousness degree. Concerning such book characteristics like cover type, rating size format, and publication year, omnivores’ preferences differ from univores’ ones. However, anticipated distinction in price and number of pages coefficients, based on previous researches, was not proved.