Bright and dark sides of engaging in fan communities for human brand loyalty

As the role of fan communities becomes significant in supporting human brands, previous studies have paid attention to address the dynamics in fan communities (Han et al. 2014; Kim and Kim 2017; Jun et al. 2018). However, despite the fact that the significance of fan communities has been noted, this research area still remains largely unexplored (Kim and Kim 2017) as the studies on communities in marketing literature have largely focused on brand communities. Furthermore, this study brought positive psychological perspectives such as social well-being to fan community study and revealed the positive link between members’ social well-being and human brand loyalty. This finding contributes to existing literatures by suggesting the importance of enhancing members’ quality of life in increasing marketing performances associated with the human brands. Since marketing research has focused on finding a way to increase marketing performances, the role of consumers’ quality of life can provide meaningful insights in that matter.
In addition to the theoretical implications, we believe that our findings can provide useful insights for the practitioners in the entertainment industry in terms of how to manage fan communities for supporting their celebrities. For example, as the increased normative community pressure negatively influences members’ social well-being and loyalty towards celebrities, it might be important to minimize the negative impact by emphasizing autonomy of fans when practitioners design group-based fan community activities. Also, as our findings suggest the significance of social well-being from engaging with other members in increasing fans’ loyalty behaviors, it is suggested for the practitioners that fan communities need to be run to foster positive interactions among members.