Brand Fandom Dynamic Analysis Framework based on Customer Data in Online Communities

Abstract

Brand fandom refers to a collection of consumers with strong emotions toward a brand. Studying the dynamics of brand fandom can help brands understand which services or strategies influence their consumers to become a part of brand fandom. However, existing literature on fandom in the last three decades has mainly used qualitative methods, and there is still a lack of research on fandom using quantitative methods. Specifically, previous studies lack a framework for locating fandoms from online textual data and analyzing their dynamics. This study proposes a framework for exploring brand fandom dynamics based on online textual data. This framework consists of four phases based on the design thinking model: Preparing Data, Defining Fandom Categories, Generating Fandom Dynamics, and Analyzing Fandom Dynamics. This framework uses techniques such as social network analysis and process mining, combined with brand personality theory. We demonstrate the applicability of this framework using case studies of two Korean home appliance brands. The dataset contains 14,593 posts by consumers in 374 online communities. The results show that the proposed framework can analyze brand fandom dynamics using textual customer data. Our study contributes to the interdisciplinary research at the intersection of data-driven service design and consumer culture quantification.