Gendered melancholia as cultural branding: fandom participation in the K-pop community

ABSTRACT K-pop poses several conundrums to international business and marketing specialists regarding its global success. This paper tests two hypotheses drawn from branding theory, feminist theory and fandom studies to corroborate the argument that cultural branding is a key to the success of K-pop. Cultural branding is the most prominent of all branding strategies in the 21st century as its success is anchored in the creation and dissemination of a performing myth that can challenge ongoing contradictions in society, including sexism. What K-pop tries to convey to its fans all over the world is this performing ideology of gendered melancholia that is commonly shared among women due to sexism. However, no previous study has tested this theoretical implication from branding and feminist theories, which are also beneficial to business studies. Using survey data collected from 15 countries, we employ a logistic regression method to corroborate a hypothesis that gendered melancholia motivates women in all parts of the world to participate in the fandom of Hallyu and K-pop, or Korean pop culture.