Segmenting fan communities: Toward a taxonomy for researchers and industry

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.

[1]  Eric J. Arnould,et al.  How Individuals’ Cherished Possessions Become Families’ Inalienable Wealth , 2004 .

[2]  Ingrid Poncin,et al.  Ten years of value cocreation: An integrative review , 2016 .

[3]  Jillian C. Sweeney,et al.  Moving towards the Service-Dominant Logic – a Comment , 2007 .

[4]  Gianfranco Walsh,et al.  Identifying, segmenting and profiling online communicators in an internet music context , 2010 .

[5]  Stephen R. O’Sullivan The Market Maven Crowd: Collaborative Risk-Aversion and Enhanced Consumption Context Control in an Illicit Market , 2015 .

[6]  Bernard Cova,et al.  Global brand communities across borders: the Warhammer case , 2007 .

[7]  L. Flynn,et al.  Opinion leaders and opinion seekers: Two new measurement scales , 1996 .

[8]  Richard Barbrook,et al.  The Hi-Tech Gift Economy , 1998, First Monday.

[9]  A. Muñiz,et al.  How Brand Community Practices Create Value , 2009 .

[10]  Bobbie Fletcher,et al.  Understanding the Fanboy Culture; Their Place and Role within the Games Industry. , 2015 .

[11]  Harris Wu,et al.  Harvesting social knowledge from folksonomies , 2006, HYPERTEXT '06.

[12]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing , 2004 .

[13]  Ossi Pesämaa,et al.  Gadget Loving: A Test of an Integrative Model , 2013 .

[14]  Da Hai Li,et al.  Research on Motivations of Consumer Engagement in Online Brand Community , 2013 .

[15]  Meera Venkatraman Opinion leaders, adopters, and communicative adopters: A role analysis , 1989 .

[16]  Keith D Parry Booing Adam Goodes : racism is in the stitching of the AFL , 2015 .

[17]  E. Arnould,et al.  Reflections and Reviews Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research , 2005 .

[18]  Anders Svensson Optional Marketing: A Typology of Customer Evangelism at Web 2.0 and IRL , 2011 .

[19]  John H. Summey,et al.  Technological opinion leadership: The role of personal innovativeness, gadget love, and technological innovativeness , 2016 .

[20]  J. McAlexander,et al.  Subcultures of Consumption: An Ethnography of the New Bikers , 1995 .

[21]  R. Whittemore,et al.  The integrative review: updated methodology. , 2005, Journal of advanced nursing.

[22]  C. W. Park,et al.  Brand Attachment and Brand Attitude Strength: Conceptual and Empirical Differentiation of Two Critical Brand Equity Drivers , 2010 .

[23]  Carlos Flavián,et al.  The impact of participation in virtual brand communities on consumer trust and loyalty: The case of free software , 2007, Online Inf. Rev..

[24]  Jessica M. Stanley THE NERD HOUR IS AT HAND: PORTRAYALS OF GEEKS AND NERDS IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE AD POPULAR MEDIA , 2015 .

[25]  R. Kozinets,et al.  The Wisdom of Consumer Crowds , 2008 .

[26]  A. Hemetsberger,et al.  Collective Development in Open-Source Communities: An Activity Theoretical Perspective on Successful Online Collaboration , 2009 .

[27]  Bernad Batinic,et al.  A Personality‐Competence Model of Opinion Leadership , 2012 .

[28]  D. E. Breedlove,et al.  Folk Taxonomies and Biological Classification , 1966, Science.

[29]  Stephen L. Vargo,et al.  Toward a conceptual foundation for service science: Contributions from service-dominant logic , 2008, IBM Syst. J..

[30]  Peter H. Raven,et al.  Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies , 1968 .

[31]  Deborah S. Carstens,et al.  Big Five Personality Traits and Brand Evangelism , 2014 .

[32]  Nan Zhou,et al.  How do brand communities generate brand relationships? Intermediate mechanisms , 2012 .

[33]  P. Herr,et al.  Effects of Word-of-Mouth and Product-Attribute Information on Persuasion: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Perspective , 1991 .

[34]  K. Gwinner,et al.  WHAT MAKES MAVENS TICK? EXPLORING THE MOTIVES OF MARKET MAVENS INITIATION OF INFORMATION DIFFUSION , 2004 .

[35]  Sarah J. S. Wilner,et al.  Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities , 2009 .

[36]  Tim Mazzarol,et al.  Factors influencing word of mouth effectiveness: receiver perspectives , 2008 .

[37]  Avi Shankar,et al.  Learning to be tribal: facilitating the formation of consumer tribes , 2013 .

[38]  Dick Mizerski,et al.  Identifying Customer Evangelists , 2015 .

[39]  W. Glynn Mangold,et al.  Positioning Southwest Airlines through employee branding , 2005 .

[40]  Linda L. Price,et al.  The market maven: A diffuser of marketplace information. , 1987 .

[41]  Damien Arthur,et al.  Hard-Core Members’ of Consumption-Oriented Subcultures Enactment of Identity: the Sacred Consumption of Two Subcultures , 2008 .