Social media mavenism: Toward an action-based metric for knowledge dissemination on social networks

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article, leaning on the concept of market mavenism, proposes a method to gauge knowledge sharing in the age of new media. Hinging on imagery, and led by Pinterest, Instagram, and WeHeartIt, a breed of social media is gaining ground by attracting millennials and females. Accordingly, there is a need to conceptualize social media mavenism in a way that deliberates the specificities of these media and theorize about its liaison with the behaviors related to social commerce and conducted by consumers on these media. In the qualitative investigation, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with sixteen regular users of Pinterest, Instagram, Etsy, WeHeartIt or Polyvore. The quantitative investigation consisted of 528 females that are regular users of Pinterest. The results supported our thesis that the social network’s utilitarian attitude, role in decision making, and digital virtual consumption generate the maven-like behavior by fueling three social commerce-related behaviors (network expansion, social privatization, and knowledge creation). Post-hoc analysis reveals that individual factors discriminate social media mavens or influencers, showing predictive validity. The results lay the groundwork for an action-based metric that entice practitioners to target online mavens by discerning the social commerce-related behaviors they conduct – behaviors that can be nurtured by enhancing the network’s attitudinal and experiential factors.