FANOMICS: The Economics of the Fan Principle

Companies can be even more successful and grow sustainably by transferring the Fan Principle, i.e. the mechanisms of fan relationships from sports, music or art, to their relationships with their customers. We describe exactly how it works when companies turn their highly satisfied customers into fans with FANOMICS—the Economics of the Fan Principle. In this chapter, we develop FANOMICS step by step and use concise examples from international companies to explain how to apply it correctly—but also what you can do wrong. We combine the various strands of explanation into an overall definition of FANOMICS and illustrate the concrete implementation using two prominent examples of globally active German companies—the discount grocer Aldi and the household appliance manufacturer, Miele. In this way, we create the basis for deriving concrete areas of implementation.