Consumers as Brand Fans: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda Using the TCCM Framework

ABSTRACT Fans have long been integral to consumer behavior research, as evidenced by work on fans of entertainment media franchises, sports teams, and product brands. While fans have traditionally been viewed as fringe or extreme consumers, fans are now recognized as central to mainstream consumer culture. Recently, marketing research studies focus on consumers as “brand fans”, yet the literature employing terminology relating to consumers as brand fans is fragmented and lacks cohesion. This systematic literature review aims to synthesize and clarify the role of consumers as brand fans within marketing and consumer research. This systematic literature review applies the TCCM framework to address three research questions: in what ways have consumers been understood as brand fans, what theories, contexts, characteristics and methods have been used to discuss brand fans, and what can future research do to further clarify and gain insights from the construct of brand fans. This paper synthesizes 38 studies on brand fans published in ABDC journals ranked either A*, A or B and indexed before December 31, 2024 to offer a novel research agenda. Findings of this review suggest that brand fandoms are reflective of mainstream cultural shifts that normalize fan and fandom participation and that brand fans are unique consumers who exhibit distinctly fan‐oriented consumption behaviors toward branded products. The review provides recommendations for future research that can expand understanding of brand fans.