Testing the Concepts of Market Mavenism and Opinion Leadership in China

Market mavenism and opinion leadership are two important consumer influential concepts in the marketing communication literature. This study presents two research questions: (1) are the concepts of market mavenism and opinion leadership valid in the Chinese context? and (2) what are the demographic, psychological, and behavioral differences in predicting market mavenism and opinion leadership? This study extends the consumer influential literature and provides a richer picture of market mavenism and opinion leadership. The results based on the survey sample drawn from 316 Chinese respondents are illuminating: market mavenism and opinion leadership were indeed distinctive yet related concepts. Price-value consciousness, altruism, monochronicity, and income all significantly and positively influenced market mavenism while only price-value consciousness and monochronicity significantly and positively predicted opinion leadership. Altruism and income showed statistically significant difference in explaining market mavenism and opinion leadership.