The Impact of Omnivorism on Consumer Choice : The Case of the Book Market

This research analyzes the impact of the degree of omnivorousness on consumer choice in the book market. Panel Scanner data for 2012-2015 were provided by a Saint Petersburg chain store. The final sample was restricted to 10,789 purchase occasions made by 3,709 loyal clients in 2015. We assessed the degree of omnivorousness through the use of purchase histories of various book genres. A mixed 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 degree of omnivorousness. Concerning such book characteristics like cover type, rating, format size, and publication year, omnivores' preferences differ from univores'. However, the anticipated distinction in the coefficients of price and number of pages, based on previous researches, was not proved