Market Mavens: Psychological Influences

Market mavens are consumers who are highly involved in the marketplace and represent an important source of marketplace information to other consumers. Because of their influence on other consumers across a wide range of product domains, market mavens are particularly interesting to retailers. Previous studies have clarified the behavioral tendencies of market mavens. The present study focuses on psychological influences on market mavenism. A structural-equation model of the normative influences on the psychology of the market maven is developed and tested. The hypothesized model describes relationships between global psychological constructs (self-esteem, tendency to conform), consumer traits (susceptibility to interpersonal influence, consumer need for uniqueness), and a domain-specific tendency (opinion leadership), placing the market maven construct in a normative, nomological network. The hypothesized model was supported by the data. The findings reveal the complexity of the market maven by disclosing their susceptibility to normative influence despite their need for uniqueness. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Each year, businesses spend billions of dollars to market their products and services to consumers. In the United States, over 128 billion dollars was spent in 2003 on advertising alone (Vranica, 2004). With increasing competition in the marketplace and the increasing cost of promotion, a Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 22(4): 289–312 (April 2005) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/mar.20060