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speaking as someone who works in academic research, the fact that the authors here cite a study of NINETEEN (19) people as a reasonable sample size, and then add a throwaway comment about how they got participants by snowballing - if i was reviewing this paper, i would reject it https://twitter.com/vante_fm/status/1385708796950024195">https://twitter.com/vante_fm/...
if this was my undergrad student& #39;s work (which is more the level it reads at) i would give it a C+ for effort. good ideas, but not well formulated, & research conducted in a haphazard and non-scientific manner. any journalist quoting it is really scraping the bottom of the barrel
now speaking as an ARMY, the opinions expressed by the participants are all too familiar and are partially rooted in lack of understanding. dear USAmericans: Bighit isn& #39;t hoarding your ticket money, Ticketmaster is. They refunded Korean tour dates & didn& #39;t even sell in Europe.
constant merch drops, especially last minute ones, are ways to recoup the lost money from a world tour cancelled by covid, and anyone with the tiniest ounce of business sense would know this as soon as the merch drops and make an informed decision about purchases
attitudes about needing to buy merch as soon as it drops (for the limited edition collectors value/to beat bighit& #39;s notorious issue with understocking) have become pervasive within the community and this in turn creates a culture of genuine resentment among some fans
some other opinions about merch drops sound awfully familiar to me from things said in group chats that i& #39;m mercifully no longer a part of. complaints about quantity, quality, frequency, etc, and yet invariably these same fans will end up buying some merch anyway
there is a BIG difference between being sad & frustrated that you can& #39;t obtain merch that you genuinely want (due to financial or shipping issues) and being angry because bighit is releasing merch that you don& #39;t even really want, simply on principle
most genuine ARMY react to new merch dropping with either excitement, or mild disinterest because they understand that this merch either isn& #39;t for them or doesn& #39;t interest them (for example the authors report that USAmerican ARMY broadly didn& #39;t buy the London concert DVDs)
this is where i& #39;m gonna branch off into theory a bit more: they& #39;re not angry about the merch. they& #39;re angry because BTS doesn& #39;t feel special to them any more. some fans "cool off" BTS after a couple of years and maybe move onto a newer, smaller, more special feeling fandom.
