The Market Maven Crowd: Collaborative Risk‐Aversion and Enhanced Consumption Context Control in an Illicit Market

Abstract

Contemporary culture is characterized by individual and societal efforts to limit exposure to risk. Paradoxically, many consumers actively pursue high-risk consumption experiences. High-risk consumption, coupled with a lack of consumption-orientated information, amplifies consumer vulnerability. However, consumer-to-consumer information sharing can help reduce unwarranted risk and enhance consumption context control. This study investigates the ecstasy "market maven crowd": an online community anonymously bound by acts of collective market mavenism intended to address the void of market information and reduce the risks thereof. Acts of collective market mavenism include the assimilation and dissemination of scientific ecstasy pill content reports and personal ecstasy consumption tales. The diffusion of market-orientated information provides consumers with an opportunity to identify, and avert, the serious health risks intrinsic to ecstasy consumption and assert consumption context control. Collaborative market mavenism fosters market policing, which enhances the safety structures of the unregulated ecstasy market. This study contributes to marketing and consumer research by developing an understanding of how consumers collectively adapt to risk online; displaying market mavenism as an innovative framework to examine online consumer-to-consumer information sharing; showing how Internet technologies facilitate the emergence of market maven crowds; and providing marketers with guidelines for approaching market maven crowds. Finally, the author discusses the societal implications arising and suggests directions for future research. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Advances in technology are providing increasing opportunities for consumers to interact and relay a range of practical market-orientated information (

The satisfaction and stress of being a market maven: A social network perspective

“…One of the fascinating ways researchers can approach and extend this study is by examining virtual communities (Bruyn and Lilien, ). A very recent study investigated the “market maven crowd,” which refers to an online community anonymously bound by acts of collective market mavenism to reduce risks through consumer‐to‐consumer information sharing (O'Sullivan, ). However, the literature on online communities has yet to address the interplay of social networks and interactions within these communities (Van Den Bulte and Wuyts, ).…”

“…However, the literature on online communities has yet to address the interplay of social networks and interactions within these communities (Van Den Bulte and Wuyts, ). As consumer virtual networks (e.g., Facebook) continue to grow (Belch et al ., ; O'Sullivan, ) and peer‐to‐peer communications gain more popularity (Moran and Muzellec, ), the issue of whether consumers exhibit similar levels of behavior in online networks is gaining in importance. Thus, it is beneficial to examine whether market mavens experience differing levels of stress and satisfaction in networks that operate online.…”

Cyber-mavens and online flow experiences: Evidence from virtual worlds

“…Lawrence F. Feick and Linda L. Price's original 'foundational' papers on mavens (Feick and Price, 1987;Price, Feick and Guskey-Federouch, 1988;Price, Feick and Guskey, 1995) have attracted numerous replications and extensions. This includes psychological influences, motives, and maven profiling (Goldsmith, Flynn, and Clark, 2012;Vazifehdoost, Akbari, and Charsted, 2012;Fitzmaurice, 2011;Stokburger-Sauer and Hoyer, 2009;Goldsmith, Clark, and Goldsmith, 2006;Clark and Goldsmith, 2005;Walsh, Gwinner, and Swanson, 2004), the extent of the maven repertoire across product and service categories (Slama and Williams, 1990), the presence of teen Internet mavens and their influence in family decision-making (Belch, Krentler and Willis-Flurry, 2005), mavens and consumer self-confidence (Clark, Goldsmith, and Goldsmith, 2008;Chelminski, and Coulter, 2007), mavens' attitudes towards technology (Geissler and Edison, 2005), consumer innovativeness of mavens (Andrews and Benedicktus, 2015;Ruvio and Shoham, 2007;Goldsmith, Flynn, and Goldsmith, 2003), maven blog activity (Kim et al,2012), the value of mavens in product referrals (Walsh and Elsner, 2012), mavens' adoption of service innovations (Evanschitzky et al,2014), and market maven activities in illicit markets (O'Sullivan, 2015), among many other areas that have received scrutiny.…”

The baby boomer market maven in the United Kingdom: an experienced diffuser of marketplace information

“…This means that word-of-mouth communications are likely to be even more important among mature adults than among younger audiences. Indeed, market mavens can compensate for a lack of market information and contribute to the welfare of others (O'Sullivan, 2015;Price et al, 1995). Moreover, researchers usually favour younger samples, yet as people age they become more dissimilar with respect to lifestyles, needs and consumption habits (Moschis, 1996), so findings that are relevant to younger adults are not necessarily applicable to middle-aged and older consumers.…”