=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3090/paper20
|storemode=property
|title=Fans Capital in Contemporary Business: From the Perspective of Relational Capital to Understand Fandom
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3090/spaper20.pdf
|volume=Vol-3090
|authors=Bingyu Chen
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ims2/Chen21
}}
==Fans Capital in Contemporary Business: From the Perspective of Relational Capital to Understand Fandom==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3090/spaper20.pdf
Fans Capital in Contemporary Business: From the Perspective
of Relational Capital to Understand Fandom
Bingyu Chena
a
Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Ave, Singapore, 639798, Singapore
Abstract
This article aims to understand the status and features of fans relationship in the relational
capital of enterprises, and then put forward some potential actions about how to take advantage
of this kind of capital. The first part is about fans participation and the status of fan capital in
the commercial context. From the technical perspective, it is based on an internet-based
consumption model, making digital ubiquity will become the new normal. From the cultural
perspective, convergence culture and participatory culture further evolve and develop.
Therefore, it can be considered that fan relations provide enterprises with additional channels
and new interaction possibilities. The second part is about fans psychological features and
some problems concerned. In most cases, fan labour is driven by emotion without
compensation. Loyalty, identity and Passion are the main psychological characteristics. This
kind of emotional group will also bring about instability and moral problems, usually being
regarded as the "Dark side". Some potential actions to expand their profit model and channel
are what the last part wants to discuss. This article suggests three actions: i) Establish brand
page and brand communities; ii) Value and operate the relationship of fans and iii) Combine
products and propaganda with the aesthetic economy.
Keywords 1
Fans capital, e-business, relational capital
1. Introduction
Developments of new technologies have greatly affected people’s lifestyles. The widespread use of
new media has influenced the communication relationships between business owners and their
customers [1]. It also brings more possibilities and changes for the relationship between fans and
relationships from them. The first question this study wants to discuss is what the status of fans’
relationships is in the relational capital of enterprises. Most of the modern consumer market is often the
generations described as "digital native", they are used to the internet-based consumption model, which
is the foundation of this study. Combined with the technical foundation and participatory culture,
fandom in social media provide additional channel and new interaction possibilities for modern
business.
Based on online communities, especially today, with the popular development of UGC (User
Generated Content) continues, fans will use social media and other platforms to conduct related
activities based on their favourite content. Talking about whether fans capital can be regarded as an
important and useful intellectual capital in this era of entertainment, it is not only necessary to discuss
its influence and importance, but also to consider whether this capital can be used. Therefore, the
psychology and motivation of fans need to be mentioned. Identity, loyalty, and passion are the three
important psychological features behind fans participation. This part will also discuss the dark side and
instability of fan's labour to remind such a point: before managing fans capital to expand enterprises'
profit model and channel, the disadvantages and interests of the fan community are also worthy of
attention.
IMS 2021 - International Conference "Internet and Modern Society", June 24-26, 2021, St. Petersburg, Russia
EMAIL: W200013@e.ntu.edu.sg
ORCID: 0000-0002-1055-8660
© 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
IMS-2021. International Conference “Internet and Modern Society” 213
Traditionally, advertisers used to invite stars as spokesmen to promote sales, but they often used a
relatively single way of communication, such as advertising in newspapers. Now, with the development
of social media, enterprises should learn how to use these new tools to expand the market scale and
maintain user stickiness [2]. Therefore, in this last part, from some new economic features, three actions
related to social media are proposed.
2. Participation and Status of Fans in Business
People tend to be involved in social media and do fandom behaviours frequently in contemporary
society. Jason [3] did research on American Internet users, revealing that the spend on social networking
and microblogging are respectively 1.72 h and 0.81 h a day on average. Additionally, on social media,
half of their users are obsessed with following brands [4]. The relationship between enterprises and
consumers has changed a lot due to new communication ways.
Digital natives are often referred to as Generation Y and Z who grows in the environment full of
digital and technological devices. While traditional sources of information and consumption models
also have a big influence on these people, digital sources tend to play a more important role. A study
about the young generation showed teens and tweens spend more than 6.5 h and 4.5 h respectively on
screening media [5]. The study also indicated that the online behaviour of tweens and teens, finding
social media has been integrated into our lives, regardless of adults and children, which caused a change
with functions of social media to stick users has been well recognized by marketers who tend to use
social media as their publicity tool and make advertisement on it in consumer behaviour. Meanwhile,
there are more and more types of online shopping platforms and online goods, helping the young
generation form an internet-based fan consumption model.
In the production link of the fandom economy, it requires the participation of a large number of
people to form a heat and form a virtuous circle. In addition, due to the promotion of the cultural
economy by the web 2.0 and UGC model, the behaviour of fans has evolved from “participation” to the
“output”. Enterprises must find some new changes and methods to deal with this consumption model,
social media is the platform they often rely on. However, the typical method of focusing on the number
of original fans cannot describe the potential and realized range of social media brand impressions, they
need to take actions to interact actively with the digital natives, creating an effective strategy for
reaching key audience segments [6].
Fans' online participation is completed by fans' expressions, sharing and communication. Within
online communities, fans take the initiative to produce cultural products related to idols and interact
with other fans, these all happen naturally around common interests when people participate in online
communities [7]. The audience is no longer satisfied with passive acceptance but participates in cultural
production. Fan groups use new media earlier than other types of audiences and are more active
participants [8]. In the traditional concepts of convergence culture and participatory culture, the focus
of fan practice is to “participate in production” rather than “what to produce”. In the fan community,
fans participate in the growth of their favourite content and gain experience for themselves through this
participatory behaviour itself. On the internet-based consumption model, participatory culture is not
only restricted by the market economy, fans' self-experience and self-identification in cultural
consumption can be echoed more widely. Jenkins used "cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless
consumers" to describe fans as the active consumer to challenge the existing stereotypes of fans.
In addition, as a group, the behaviour of fans will also reflect collective characteristics. Hills [8]
used the concept of "transmedia and collective intelligence" to describe the large-scale information
collection and processing activities that occur in the online community. No one knows everything on
the Internet, but everyone knows something. People gather for a common goal, forming a new type of
community marked by voluntary, temporary, and strategic affiliation, cooperating in the production and
exchange of knowledge.
Because of the unique communication characteristics of social media, communication between
consumers and businesses has changed from one-way to two-way. Traditionally, advertisers used to
invite stars as spokesmen to promote sales, but they often used a relatively single way of
communication, such as advertising in newspapers and magazines. Now, with the development of new
media technology, the commercial value of stars can be further explored. For example, some idols or
214 PART 2: Digital Transformation and Global Society
stars will recommend products when they live, resulting in great sales, forming some new types of
digital labour and marketing methods, providing additional channels and new interaction possibilities.
The new platform supported by technology makes timely interaction possible and can even make
this a habit. Social media users have the habit of reposting, commenting, following and liking others on
social media. As a result, fans instead of customers, brand advocates instead of followers are the quest
for a larger market share in business [10], the social media platforms can contribute to this process. The
content and triggers on social media platforms can attract attention and cause them to act, action will
also maintain their loyalty to the brand in return. In short, social media and fandom conduct an
additional channel for enterprises to promote, and some new interaction possibilities come into
existence according to platforms' mechanisms and rules.
3. Fans’ Psychological Features and Some Problems about it
Kim and Ko [11] argued that social media has effects in attracting and ultimately maintaining
customers’ loyalty, so companies must try to understand how to use it. To study the deep influencing
factors behind this, fans’ psychological features and some problems caused are explained in this part.
3.1. Identity, Passion and Loyalty
The fan community is often an internal communication space based on the identity of fans, which
distinguishes fan behaviours from general online cultural practices. In the online community, fans will
communicate through avatars and acquire different identities, through which they can also gain a sense
of achievement, satisfaction, and social participation [12]. Different types of fans also show different
loyalty characteristics. Managers of fan communities,
or those with more fans, often have more power to speak and make decisions. They can be regarded
as key opinion leaders, possessing propaganda value similar to celebrities. As usual, virtual community
members with a strong sense of social identity are more likely to be more willing to participate in online
communities. Similarly, supporting evidence regarding the direct influence of social identity motivation
on the intention to participate in online communities [11] & [13].
Fans' labour is always free, so the motivation behind their labour is not compensation. Passion is the
most common motivation. In the sports industry, passion can be seen as the fuel of its future
development [14]. Kirk Wakefield [15] uses his multiple-item passion scale and compare it with
established social identification fan classification scales to provide evidence of discriminant and
predictive validity to prove the concept of fan passion is important on sports and entertainment
properties. For fans, their labour is often not for monetary and material gains, but emotional rewards.
Sometimes the avoidance or escape from other activities is the primary motivation for fan's online
participation [11], they need to find other ways to release their emotional needs, and this need is often
through a passion for a certain culture or cultural content.
Loyalty is another important factor that should be taken into account, which could influence brand
supporters in the long run. The relationship between relationship benefits and customer loyalty is related
to relationship marketing [1], which is obvious in the gaming industry. Online games have become a
popular computer application, and the loyalty of gamers is crucial to game providers because online
gamers often switch between games [16]. The establishment and maintenance of brand loyalty is an
important topic of long-term concern in the market [6]. It is a symbol of brand loyalty and can be
conceptualized as the ultimate goal.
3.2. Instability and Violation of Fan Interests
Some arguments about the meaninglessness of managing fan capital are because they hold a view
that fans are often emotional, they are often changeable and unreliable. But when it is discussed from
the perspective of a group, this kind of concept is relatively stable. There are many factors involved:
loyalty, identity, social participation, and satisfaction, etc. While some people leave the community,
others will join the community, which can form a relative dynamic balance. Also, participating in team
IMS-2021. International Conference “Internet and Modern Society” 215
activities encourages online gamers to abide by team norms and meet their social needs, while also
increasing their loyalty.
In addition, some mechanisms of social media also establish technical feasibility for fan stability.
Facebook provides opportunities not only to deliver brand impressions on a large scale but also to
deliver impressions with a social background. This means that it has the potential to produce
improvements through the whole marketing cycle from brand awareness to lifetime value [6]. Perhaps
an individual's interests are changeable, but social media tags will always have a corresponding group
of people, which also maintains a relatively stable target for marketing.
Fan participation is freely chosen in all aspects and understood as a kind of fun, and neither of these
is usually related to money. Companies treat fans as a kind of free labour, the lack of relevant laws is
also an important factor, making enterprises ignore the interests of fans. Concerns about free labour for
fans not only exist in online fan communities, but also in some
traditional labour modes in real life. In the broader American working environment, it is called as
"late capitalist sports culture industry" to describe the dark side of fans free labour as interns [17].
Because it expects interns to accept substandard working conditions but is full of enthusiasm and love
for their work.
In short, the instability of fan groups is greatly reduced due to the protection of online communities
and social media mechanisms. It is more valuable to manage this type of capital from the perspective
of the group. However, before using the perspective of capital to understand fan capital, we must
consider the protection of the interests of the fan community.
4. Fans' Psychological Features and Some Problems about it
In the era of new media, consumers' ability to identify and establish connections with brands of
interest enables brands and consumers to share and interact in new ways. Brands and their consumers
can now establish a two-way relationship and share content, news, and feedback, forming a good
participatory communication and market paradigm. However, the typical method of focusing on the
number of original fans (or the total number of participations in a given content) cannot describe the
potential and realized the scope of social media brand impressions [6], and companies need to adopt
some new methods to reach the fan base.
4.1. Establish Brand Page and Brand Communities
The Internet provides a brand new market channel for the brand where the display is the first and
relatively important level. Pin Luarn et al. [18] studies 1,030 brand-page posts on Facebook, finding
that “the media and content type of posts exert a significant effect on user online engagement”.
The attention economy is an economic model that achieves profitability by attracting audience
attention [19], which heavily influence modern marketing to attract the attention of users or consumers
at low cost, cultivate potential consumer groups, and obtain the greatest future intangible assets. Under
the mode of the attention economy, the concept of "symbolic value" of commodities has been further
deepened. The gap between the quality of commodities is constantly narrowing, so the symbolic
meaning of commodities has also changed when people choose commodities. From a sociological
perspective, consumption is not only an act but also a symbol system [20]. Both consumption and
consumer goods are symbolic systems and symbol systems used to convey meaning, which can be
shown on the brand page. In addition to this, brand communities will maintain the loyalty of fans and
provide them with a good place to produce symbols that are closer to consumers, because the audience
of branded content on social platforms can better understand the true impact of these impressions. Using
Facebook or other social media to meet the needs of Generation Y and respond will make marketers
gain the most because consumers' loyalty is ensured through buying an assigned brand [18].
216 PART 2: Digital Transformation and Global Society
4.2. Establish Brand Page and Brand Communities
The paradigm of interpersonal communication has declined in recent years due to the development
of mass communication technology, but the extensive use of social media has brought new development
and possibilities to this paradigm. Zainal et al. [21] studies how electronic word-of-mouth can affect
consumers on their intention of purchasing, finding social media engagement could improve their
intention because of the recommendation in the fandom communities or from their friends. Attracting
fans through marketing messages is of interest to brands, but current research has found that fans’
friends represent a huge potential audience, usually far beyond the size of fans.
The mechanism of social media could convey the information actively and directly by algorithm, or
by the participation of fans post, repost and likes. These unpaid impressions are created when friends
actively interact with the brand and are visible on friends' walls or news sources. These behaviours may
appear between fans, fan friends and other social media users. Take Facebook, for example, social
media determines factors of digital native's relationship commitment towards brands [11] & [1].
Besides, social media users are more likely to share brand information with their friends in innovative
ways on the platform, regardless of in positive ways like expressing their love and recommendation or
negative ways like criticism. In this way, social media platforms such as Facebook accelerates the
coverage and vitality of the sharing. For each fan, 34 fans can be contacted [22], so each user is endowed
with great communication efficiency. Under this behaviour model, a very huge consumer market has
emerged in front of the brand through the exploration of fan relationships. Therefore, by operating the
relationship between fans and other social media users, the brand can form a wide and effective
communication effect at the level of interpersonal communication.
4.3. Combine Products with Aesthetic Economy
The objects have "aesthetic value" besides the use value and exchange value considered by Marx.
Aesthetic value is a new type of value that transcends human physiological desires [23]. It is the result
of transforming production goals from satisfying the needs of human life to opening human desires in
the pursuit of more benefits in the development of business and capital.
Under the influence of aesthetic economy and aesthetic culture, with the advancement of technology
and the improvement of social tolerance, enterprises should take strategic vision to develop strategies
on how to attract audiences through aesthetics.AR is considered to be a technology's ease of use, which
will greatly affect consumers' attitudes towards technology [17]. The emergence of AR brings a new
watching experience for fans, which is superior to traditional watching types with a fixed angle of view
and low-speed movement, thus may be regarded as the most important new trend for consumers to
interact with activation in some way [24]. AR is just an example of how enterprises could use new
technology to make their consumers have a better aesthetic experience. Products with good design and
a beautiful appearance will have better marketing results in social and cultural markets.
5. Conclusion
Fandom does play an important role in contemporary business models, which is largely linked with
the Internet-based consumption model formed by digital natives. Additionally, people participate more
actively and output more products in their social media or online communities. Fandom is taking shape
of some new additional channels and interaction possibilities for enterprises, to expand their profit
channel and marketing targets. It is no doubt that fandom drives by some emotional features and is not
restricted by contract or money. But simply thinking it is unreliable is not correct, the good choice to
tackle with fan capital is to understand and then take advantage of these psychological features to
manage them in the long run. Besides, the problems about violation of fan interests are also worthy of
attention because they will also influence enterprises in return.
As a result, enterprises have no choice but to adapt to this trend by making strategies regarding social
media to manage this kind of relational capital. They need to manage fans capital through social media
to form a good brand image and achieve better communication results with the help of social media. By
IMS-2021. International Conference “Internet and Modern Society” 217
establishing brand homepages and communities, they can attract and maintain the attention of fans; by
valuing and operating the relationship of fans, good communication can be formed, and its effect does
not less than mass communication's; by giving consumers more aesthetic experience, their products will
also have more unique aesthetic competitiveness, especially for fans.
6. Acknowledgements
Acknowledge all the authors of the citations in this article.
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