Antecedents to Strong Identification with Fan Communities of Human Brands

As the human brands are becoming more popular and influential, their influences on the lives of people also getting more significant. Fans of certain human brands create or participate in the fan community to seek like-minded others for sharing same interests and enthusiasms. In doing so, fan community members identify themselves with the fan community and support the human brand they like by doing community- based group behaviors. Thus, well-established fan communities are very influential and provide great marketing opportunities, suggesting the importance of the studying the fan communities. This study examined the dynamics among human brand, fans, and fan community identification. Results of the study found that attachment to human brand influences fan community identification positively. Furthermore, one community-related variable, human brand-fan community similarity, and one consumer-related variable, need for belongingness, were found to strengthen the relationship between human brand attachment and fan community identification. Implications that the results of this study provides are also discussed.