A Hero Who Never Dies: Steve Jobs in His Fans' Minds

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. A Hero Who Never Dies: Steve Jobs in His Fans’ Minds

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