Where does maven collide?

A consumer who accumulates broad knowledge about many products, prices, shops, and deals, and who enjoys passing that information on to others, without being an expert in any single category. Feick and Price named and measured this person in 1987 in The Market Maven: A Diffuser of Marketplace Information, scoring the trait with a short self-report scale and separating it from both the opinion leader, whose influence is tied to one product area, and the early adopter, who is defined by buying first. The market maven's mark is breadth of general marketplace awareness, not depth in any one topic. This referent is a measured personality trait of a shopper, and it has nothing to do with a stickler for correct grammar or with a well-placed node in a diffusion network.[1]

Unit

One consumer, scored on a self-report trait scale

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Feick and Price's six-item market maven scale, reported by the person about themselves

A highly connected individual thought to sit at the center of an information network and to set off the wide spread of a product, idea, or behavior once they adopt it, the figure popular writing calls a maven or connector. Watts and Dodds examined this hub hypothesis directly in 2007 in Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation, and their simulations found that large cascades are usually driven not by these special hubs but by a critical mass of ordinary, easily influenced people. Here the maven is a position in a graph and a claim about who starts cascades, not a self-reported trait or a grammar critic. This referent is a structural role in a diffusion network, tested and largely doubted, and it should not be read as the marketing trait it is often confused with.[2]

Unit

One node in a diffusion network, by its connections and reach

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Modeled by degree and by influence over cascades in network simulations