Distinguishing between Cosmopolitans and Omnivores in Organizational Audiences

Abstract

How do organizational audience members value products and services? We examine here consumers called cosmopolitans (individuals who think beyond a single geographical place) and those called omnivores (individuals who show a taste for variety in genres). We study this difference between audience members in exploratory analyses of dining, looking at consumption trajectories of specific diners from their reviews of restaurants, posted in a popular online platform. From this open-ended analysis, we discover that many omnivores are not cosmopolitans and vice versa, despite much theory suggesting otherwise. In further empirical analyses, we study a large sample of online restaurant reviews, allowing us to follow the dining behavior and attitudes of over 380,000 individuals from 2005 to 2019. We find that the effects of cosmopolitanism depend on being an omnivore; we also find both cosmopolitans and omnivores make authenticity attributions more frequently than other reviewers. In looking at neighborhoods and types of restaurants visited, we find that diversity (of both the organizations visited and the demography of neighborhoods visited) heightens a diner’s sensitivity to authenticity, suggesting intentional diversity-seeking behavior. These novel findings suggest avenues for future theory and empirical research.