The initial motive for undertaking this research, was a desire to better understand thosefactors which were said to affect the diffusion of ethnic foods. In attempting to developthe general methodology for this study, the author revisited seminal studies ondiffusion of innovations, word-of-mouth, opinion leadership, and innovator / earlyadopter influence. During this process, the author discovered Feick and Price's (1987),emergent "Market Maven", theory. Said to be distinctly different from opinion leadersand early adopters, market mavens were not only believed to have a higher awarenessof general marketplace information, but also more source credibility than other word-of-mouth influencers. Employing a replication study approach, a telephone survey of400 households in urban, suburban and rural north Bedfordshire was undertaken. Theauthor found that the market maven construct was not a purely US phenomenon, butwas also present in the UK. Developing further Feick and Price's (1987) preliminaryinvestigations, this study confirmed that (in common with related opinion leadershipstudies), it had not been possible to identify market mavens using demographic / socio-economic variables. VAiilst classifying market mavens remained problematic, theauthor was nonetheless able to confirm Feick and Price's (1987) earlier findings, thatmarket mavens had an inherently increased propensity for general marketplaceinformation gathering. As this behaviour was considered by the author to be unique tomarket mavens, the construct was employed to test those factors, said to affect ethnicfood diffusion, with interesting, if largely inconclusive results.The author concluded, that the potential of the market maven construct in the diffusionof innovations process was significant, particularly as a conduit for internal word-of-mouth information in the business-to-business / industrial marketing context. In thatsituation, market mavens' heightened awareness of, and active search for, generalmarketplace information, would make them ideal targets for the type of marketingcommunication message that innovators and opinion leaders alike, reputedly ignore.
