Exploring Value Co-creation Process for Developing Fandom from the Perspective of Indie Pop Music Fans: Case Study of Cheer Chen’s Fans Group

Abstract

Annual sales of music records has been decreased at a 20% rate every year since 1998 in Taiwan because of the convenience and prevalence of downloading pirate music online The total record sales in 2002 is less than half of that in 1997 While the pop music market was suffering the number of indie music group had soared from 500-600 in the year of 2005 to 1500 in 2009 At the same time indie pop music that between pop music and indie music was not only survive even has become a main stream in Taiwan today The survival and development of indie pop music in a decreasing music market are closely related to the interaction between indie pop musicians and their fans Indie pop musicians not only keep holding on their unique styles of music and expressing their thoughts release their new online in a wide range but like to interact with fans in close distance in smaller size live performances The interaction and experience between fans and fan object in live events the shared memory between fans and fans wearing T-shirts with the logo of same fan object and even more highlighted behaviors (collection and imitating etc ) have become a value co-creation between fans and fans as well as fans and fan object On the other hand indie pop musicians do not deny their value in pop music embracing the business-oriented operation and more fans This way of interaction has won more fans for the fan object of indie pop music than indie music and more loyal fans than pop music The fans are willing to buy not only the music itself but also support to fan object In sum the unique operation model to some extent has created the high loyalty high consumption and high co-creation of fans to fan object This study is to discuss the co-creation between fans or fandom and fan object as well as from inside of the fandom Based on the case studies of Cheer Chen’s fans group the study discusses the value and process of co-creation between stakeholders and how co-created value facilitated fandom The funding is the value co-creation process could be divided into four phase: fan object recognition phase fan object exploration phase value co-production phase and co-created value sharing phase During this process six types value could be generated: social value emotional value epistemic value economic value functional value and cultural value Co-created social value can facilitate the generation of emotional value epistemic value economic value functional value and cultural value and also facilitate to increase the number of enthusiastic fans Fans in enthusiastic level can rise the interaction inside the fandom and help to build platforms about fan object to make fandom become stronger

Date of Award	2016 Feb 18
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chia-Han Yang (Supervisor)