Marketing Researchers at Mays Profile Brand Mavens
The Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University Mays Business School recently partnered with two companies to reserach a new profile of influential “brand mavens.”
A brand maven is someone who is an enthusiastic brand advocate. These mavens are certainly a group to be profiled. According to Ram Janakiraman, a marketing professor and Mays Research Fellow, brand mavens contribute about $1800 of purchasing power annually through redeemable gift cards and loyalty credits.
Janakiraman was the lead researcher on the project where he analyzed survey data from one of the partner companies to create the “brand maven” profile.
“It was good to get the reassurance that both digital and social media were the two big channels for consumers when it comes to engagement and interaction,” Janakiraman said. “I expected that people would prefer to use gift cards, but there was overwhelming evidence that digital technology is present throughout many transactions of retailers.”
Kelli Hollinger, director of the Center for Retailing Studies, talked about the importance of research like Janakiraman’s. “By leveraging the unique analytical expertise of [our] faculty, the Center for Retailing Studies can help retailers identify their best customers or in this case, Brand Mavens, and quantify their financial value to a firm,” Hollinger said.
