DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2019.528
title: Expectation of fans towards Thai boys’ love celebrity couples

description: Today online streaming platform technology brings various kinds of medias to serve audiences. TV series, as one of the most popular forms of streaming content, have been increasingly produced to compete in the market. Boys’ love series is one of competitors that has been a recent trend in many countries thanks to its fresh and light-hearted content. From novels with a specific group of readers, who love Boys’ love story, into series on screen, they prove their potential to grow more in entertainment industry. Thailand is rather open for Boys’ love content and has produced many Boys’ love series in recent years that have been widely talked about on social media. It’s not easy for Thai series to enter the world’s market but Boys’ love series did. Since Boys’ love series production in many countries is now limited to many conditions, Thailand is able to grab this opportunity to be the first mover or the major producer of Boys’ love series in the world. It is not only the series alone that has hit big, main actors who star in the series also gain popularity as a Boys’ love couple and get many fan clubs both in Thailand and overseas who cheer them to become a real couple. Many product brands even choose them to be product presenters and endorsers as they can reach more new customers who are fans of the couples and have opportunities to be known in foreign markets. Boys’ love couples have become commercial products that can make money for organisations or managers who take care of them as well as the brands who use them. Having clear strategies to manage Boys’ love couple and to develop them in a more efficient way to achieve more benefits and reach target customers is necessary. Therefore, this research aims to study the expectation of Boys’ love fans towards Boys’ love couples in order to improve or develop strategies for Boys’ love couples to meet fans’ expectations and raise opportunities to earn more revenue and future works. To study the expectations and experiences of fans and demographic factors whether they affect fans’ expectations based on marketing mix aspects or not, a survey was conducted using a questionnaire launched to fan clubs of five Boys’ love couples, who are the most popular and still active as a couple with a great number of followers in the past three years. To filter samples, only fans who had at least one-time experience about joining activities with Boys’ love couples were selected. The results of this research are based on the findings of the primary data collection. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) was used to analyse the data from the survey and all information was summarised into descriptive report.The majority of respondents strongly expected almost all factors especially those related to the Boys’ love couples, such as their attitude towards themselves, works and fan clubs, their good characteristics, their awareness of how important fans are, frequent activities with fans, etc. Furthermore, surrounding factors associated with back-end people, including managers and organisations who take care of the Boys’ love couples and all related parties, in terms of reliability, positive attitude, professionalism and non-prejudice, were also strongly expected. These expectations were then analysed and interpreted to design strategies for Boys’ love concluded in the last part of this research.