Diversity of Fans on Social Media

This chapter explores the diversity of celebrity fans in China, including their motives, activities and processes of celebrity idolization. Based on a grounded theoretical approach, the authors traced and analyzed the user-generated content posted on Weibo that was prepared by fans of the singer/actor Wallace Chung. The analysis reveals five fan segments with different motives: casual fans (playful), fascinated fans (aspirational), devoted fans (sense of belonging), dysfunctional fans (identification with celebrity), and reflective fans (solid self-identity), thus demonstrating fans' different characteristics. This chapter also outlines the typical developmental process as fans increase their investments into the celebrity. Variants of this process, given the fans' different psychological and demographic characteristics, were also discussed.

Fans and Brands

Although fandom has a rich history within pop culture, it is difficult to know when fandom was formed and what constitutes a fandom. In this chapter the authors define fandom and its related activities, as well as delineate it from the similar fan-brand communities of brand communities and brand publics. A typology for fan-brand communities is presented with two dimensions: 1) motivation for engagement and 2) social status and relationship type. This typology can help guide researchers, brands, and marketers in effectively managing different subcultures of fans. This chapter may be used as a starting point for further understanding of fan-brand community-based relationships.

Living in a Virtual Reality

Anime (animated films) and manga (comic books), fans are easily misunderstood and can even face prejudice. In fact, they are usually not as people see them. As one of the many anime and manga fans, I would like to show people what the real world of the anime and manga fan is like. As the fan population grows, the market increases, so this chapter will also act as a guide for those who are interested in this market. This chapter aims to introduce readers to the world of anime and manga fandom and to its fans, in particular. It will present and explain specific terms such as weeaboo, otaku, waifu, husbando, fujoshi, and critic. This chapter will also describe the different characters of anime and manga fans and explain how these characters can affect marketing. Finally, this chapter will look at the current market size of anime and manga fandom and explore how the culture is used in marketing.

Brand Pathologies

The Twilight media brand is a global consumption phenomenon which speaks to female consumers who enter into fantastic and corporeal relationships with its market manifestations (books, films, merchandising, and consumption communities). Twilight's brand narrative reifies the psychological power and socio-cultural allure of the ‘monstrous' vampire myth, and enables a spectrum of relational exposure from ‘Twi-hard' (devoted Twilight fan) fandom to addictive and obsessive, compulsive, and transgressive behaviors. The consumer's relational exposure to this brand is the subject of this study. The authors discuss the tensions and paradoxes which underpin female consumption of this powerful brand. They also demonstrate disturbing dimensions to the construction of consumer-brand relationships (Fournier, 1998) which impact on not only the imaginative life but the physical lives of the Twilight fans. In so doing they extend current thinking on the spectrum of fan behaviors, and comment on ideological dimensions to the construction of fan-brand relationship.

Charging Fandom in the Digital Age

In the digital age, the proliferation of fan-generated content on social media platforms is making the fan culture transitioning from the “static” online consumption to “dynamic” interaction. This is not only a result of the advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), but also a cultural phenomenon driving by participatory fandom in cyberspace. The rise of social media has dramatically altered the dynamics of fan practices and spectatorship hence increased vocality and visibility within the fan community as well as the formation and facilitation of fan roles. In this chapter, we will explore why social media have such a profound impact upon fandom. In particular, what is new with these fan communities that social media has done so much to enable. Why there is a blurring in the lines between fandom producers and consumers in the participatory fandom. Given the new forms of cultural production, how fan culture enabled by social media is more powerful than it was ever before.

Segmenting Fan Communities

Extending decades of marketing and psychological research, industry and academic circles attempt to label brand community behaviours, borrowing analogies from subcultures such as religion (evangelists), slang (mavens, haters), technology and science fiction (fanboys), and other sciences (alpha, opinion leaders). Although sometimes used as generic terms, upon examination via an integrative literature review, these and other such commonly used fandom and brand community member labels, can define the spectrum of brand fandom in a specific way—through narrative, metaphor and cross-cultural labelling. Such labelling is happening already; this chapter parses out the meaning of one label from another into a proposed folk taxonomy, or classification system developed by those steeped in the culture. This segmentation enables theoretical research into specific fan types and possible opinion leaders, along with industry recommendations for approaching each segment based on the behavioural characteristic inherent in both the historic and common usage of the word.

Working Behind Playing

With the rise of game broadcasting appearing in video sharing or streaming platforms, there is a new social phenomenon in which active fans expertizing in gaming could transcend to become tamed labour fans. This is a new role in the fan community and it enjoys paramount profitable benefit via the sponsorship of game companies. This article will investigate the nature of this new role of tamed fan labour and explore how it functions in the fan community, especially in terms of relieving fans' resistance against the game companies and consolidating the fan community by revealing their affinity for their fan. Using the example of a successful Chinese mobile game app, “Tower of Saviour”, this article will shed light on this rethinking of the fan structure, as well as on Chinese fan studies that show how tamed fan labour can benefit game companies in the Chinese cultural context.

The Passion That Unites Us All

Sports fans are individuals who are interested in and follow a sport, team, and/or athlete. These fans reinforce their identity as a fan by engaging in supportive and repetitive consumption behaviors that relate to the sport or team they are so passionate about. This chapter will provide an overview of the history and cultural heritage of sports fandom, discuss the significance and functions of fandom, underline what motivates individuals to consume sports, examine the consequences and results of fandom, and highlight contemporary research and developmental trends. This chapter will allow for a good understanding of where research on sports fandom is headed and the important issues affecting sports fans.

A Hero Who Never Dies

This chapter examines how consumers become Steve Jobs' fans and how they establish psychological bond with Steve Jobs as a means to understand the general fandom phenomenon. The authors adopted the Psychological Continuum Model (PCM) to formulate five research questions and conducted a content analysis of web reviews based on two Steve Jobs' fans online communities. Results demonstrated that (1) most fans began to know Jobs either through the use of Apple products or the exposure of mass media about Jobs and his biography; (2) what fascinated fans most about Jobs was his thoughts and ideas that “change the world”; (3) in the minds of his fans, Jobs was regarded as the greatest man or superhuman and revered as a legendary hero who inspired lots of people in the world; (4) many fans perceived Jobs as the icon of Apple products and, to them, Jobs was Apple and Apple was Jobs. As such, while many fans considered them both Apple fans and Jobs fans, significant numbers of fans were only devotees of Jobs but not Apple brand; and (5) for many fans, they actually devoted themselves to Jobs not to Apple, and they would not consider Apple products the same as Jobs' Apple. While some fans continued to support Apple as the heritage that Jobs left for his successor, others had lost their faith, loyalty and commitment to Apple in the post-Jobs era.

“Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done”

Majority of prior research show that individual's relationship with a brand is dyadic. However, the primary need for human beings is to forge meaningful interpersonal relationships, and brands can act as facilitators to achieve this need. Thus, consumer-brand-consumer relationships are rather triadic, with brands acting as an epicenter around which close-knit human relationships are formed. This chapter discusses the indispensable roles of consumers' close social relationships with their brands representing a knit brand fandom of like-minded consumers who share common consumption values and attain transcendence through branded consumption. Using grounded theory analysis, we discover that Indian consumers' cultural values of filial piety, face saving, need for escapism and brand ethnocentrism act as antecedents to consumers' romantic brand love. This romantic brand love progresses into single brand devotion through the moderation of selective perception, and ultimately translates into a close-knit brand fandom, mainly if the consumers find the brand to enable self-expression. The role of brand-hero is also important in the formation of brand fandom, as brand hero can inspire consumers and bind them together to work for common interest of the brand. Brand fandom results in consumers experiencing flow and transcendence, where they experience a temporary sense of separation from the mundane and unity with a higher plane of existence.