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Testing the market maven concept

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1362/026725708x306095

1472-1376

Caroline Goodey, Robert East,

Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

Market mavens are people who are more likely to advise others about a range of goods and services. This study explores the concept of the maven, which we test in three ways. First, we examine whether those who score highly on mavenism also score highly on self-reported advice about three disparate categories (testing the range of advice). Second, we examine whether the personality and motivational characteristics of male mavens are similar to those of female mavens (testing whether mavenism has the same bases in the two sexes). Finally, we test whether those who have a high score on mavenism have substantially different motivational characteristics compared with those with a low score. Our findings give indifferent support to the maven concept. We find only a modest association between self-reported advice giving and mavenism, we find that the personality characteristics of male mavens differ from those of female mavens, and we find that the motivational differences between mavens and non-mavens are not very substantial.