How Jena Malone ‘Saved!’ Me: An Introspective Study on a Consumer’s Fan Relationship with a Movie Actress

Scant attention has been paid to how the relationship between fans and movie stars expresses itself in everyday consumer behaviour. Therefore, this paper is taking an existential-phenomenological perspective to discuss fan behaviour as a holistic personal experience from a fan’s point of view. By using subjective personal introspection, the lead author provides hereby insights into his private lived consumption experiences as a fan of the young and very talented actress Jena Malone, which were obtained and recorded as contemporaneous data over a period of 15 months. The paper will discuss some of the interesting findings that are emerging iteratively from the introspective data and challenging some of the assumptions that the literature currently holds on fans and fan behaviour.