A Study On Consuming Behavior Of Celebrity Fandoms From A Community Culture Perspective

Nowadays,with the development of Internet communities,socialnomics is gradually replacing the position of flow economy and gaining importance as an economic form of Internet era.Fandom of celebrities,a highly organized and united group with strong purchasing power,is representative among Internet communities.Fans of megastars are even setting new records constantly with their hypernormal consumption behavior.Studying consumption behavior of celebrity fandoms from a perspective of community culture,this thesis analyzes behavior learning,consuming attitude formation and solidification,factors affecting consuming intention and consuming practice manifestations for individual fans in fan communities.This thesis also studies how individual fans obtain affective commitment and community attachment towards certain fan community;how they consume steadily,constantly and repetitively under the guidance of community culture and mutual influence between community members;and how does a fan community invoke and maximize its buying power and conduct marketing actively in order to gain recognition for the star's appeal power and popularity,to transform such recognition into said star's commercial value and raise sales of concerned merchandise or works.Notably,individual fans can resist harmful consuming behavior spontaneously upon influence of fan community,which helps to regulate extremely irrational fan consumptions and establish healthy star merchandise chains and ticketing business.The thesis adapts field investigation method.The author,as a member of celebrity fan community,has involved with fandom culture deeply for over nine years.This involvement results in profound understanding of basic hierarchy,interaction style,jargon terms,social norms and other aspects of fan communities;in-person participation of large-scale fan consuming behavior on several occasions;and continuous practice of fan consumption under guidance of fan community.This research also employs methods of document research and in-depth interview.Based on theoretical foundations of culture's influence on consumers,consumer learning,formation and solidification of consuming attitudes and other theories,the thesis addresses in-depth interviews of 12 fans and related fan community cases,intending to analyze and discuss the scenario in a more thorough way.The essay is arranged of three major sections.The first section sets up a theoretical foundation for research in later sections,which illustrates research background,research significance,research contents,literature review,theoretical framework,problems of research,research method and innovative point of research.The second section is the body and center part of this thesis,which is elaborated into four chapters: chapter one concentrates on community culture of celebrity's fandom,which summarizes manifestations and characteristics of such culture and generalizes fandom culture's impact on fan consuming behavior from macro-level;chapter two sets out to analyze behavior learning of fans under the influence of fandom culture and also enumerates learning methods of fans based on fan communities' practical circumstances;chapter three focuses on consuming intention enhancement processes of individual fans within communities and corresponding influence factors,which aims at illustrating community atmosphere's effects on fans' consuming attitude and intention;lastly,the fourth chapter concretizes features of fan consuming behavior on the basis of previous chapters and addressees various aspects in details,including consumption selection,consumption method,interaction of consuming behavior,boycott against harmful consumption behavior and other aspects.The third section drawsa conclusion based on the whole thesis and makes suggestions towards research problems presented in the first section.This section also summarizes inadequacies of the thesis.The thesis studies consuming behavior of celebrity fan within the context of fan community and community culture,examines fandom culture's impact on consumption behavior and makes proposals on regulation of harmful consumption behavior,so as to promote more effective fandom consumption behavior and improves regulations for fans consuming behavior in the future.