부산대학교 도서관

This study questioned whether there are special customers who can be called as fans among general customers. Therefore we focused on the existence of brand fans using fanship in which sports or entertainment industry has interested. This study considers self-image congruence as important antecedent to identify true brand fanship through the fanship measurement and attempt to figure out true value of brand fans with recommendation intention and customers’ brand switching intention as important consequences. As a result of structural equation model analysis, we observed that the two components of self-image congruence increased brand fanship, with a high degree of brand fanship increasing recommendation intention and reducing switching intention. We also investigated the moderating effect of involvement between self-image congruence and brand fanship. We identified that fitting of ideal self-image congruence had stronger effect on brand fanship than actual self-image congruence when the customers have high involvement about the brand. This paper will help companies to understand and manage their customers in their customer management program and provide an opportunity about brand fanship to researchers as interesting research area.