From desire to help to taking action: Effects of personal traits and social media on market mavens’ diffusion of information

Abstract

AbstractWhile extant research has studied traits of market mavens and the link from mavenism to market helping behavior, there is a need for more research to understand personal and contextual factors that influence actual recommendations of products and differences among market mavens with different traits in that respect. In this study, we took research in the area of market mavenism one step further and investigated the role of personal traits such as self‐esteem and susceptibility to normative interpersonal influence, and the contextual factor of social media, in the frequency of recommendations. We hypothesize that while market mavens with lower self‐esteem are likely to engage in less frequent recommendations, negative effect of their lower self‐esteem is attenuated when they use social media platforms as their medium of choice. Our findings lend support to our hypotheses, including the triple interaction effect between self‐esteem, choice of social media, and market mavenism on market recommendations.