The Fandom for Idols – A Survey Report on Kpop Fans in Indonesia

The product of South Korea’s music industry, or also simply and widely known as Kpop (an abbreviation for Korean pop), is so happening all around the world now, including Indonesia. Fans hold a very significant part regarding to pop culture. Without fans, an idol will not survive in that rough industry. Therefore, regarding to this matter, recently Jakpat has conducted a survey in order to see some habit and preferences of Kpop fans in Indonesia. This survey involved 793 respondents from across Indonesia who has proclaimed themselves as a Kpop fans through the preliminary questions in this survey. For the further notes, Jakpat’s respondents in this survey are Indonesian smart-phone users, with a range of age from 15 to 35 year-old.

This survey report is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is the general findings from this survey. This first chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part of the general findings, we can find what Kpop fans like the most about Kpop. Apparently, the thing that they like the most about Kpop is the music (37.45%), while the second most is the idol (24.59%). Moreover, other top five things on the list are “the visual” (9.96%), “the choreography” (9.84%), and “the performance” (8.70%). Most of our respondents (53.23%) have become Kpop fans since in between 2011 to 2015, which means that most of them (58.67%) have become Kpop fans for about 1 to 6 years already.

In the second part of general findings, we explore a little bit more about the reason why and how they became Kpop fans in the beginning. Apparently, some of our respondents just accidentally had interest for Kpop in the first place (24.09%), while some other was following their friends (23.71%). There are also some of our respondents who had interest for Kpop in the first place out of curiosity (19.04%), while some other don’t have any particular reason (11.85%) or just for fun (11.73%). Regarding to the reason why they became a Kpop fans later on, most of our respondents (73.52%) admit that they were being hooked to the music, while more than half of them (50.44%) admit that they were falling in love with a particular idol. Moreover, some of our respondents (39.72%) admit that Kpop had become their source of happiness and entertainment, while some other (29.89%) admit that they were addicted to watch a particular idol group.

The second chapter of this survey report is about the fanbase; which is a group of fans for particular team. Fanbase plays an essential part in the universe of Kpop. Every idol group has an official fanbase which become a platform to maintain the relationship between the group and their fans. It’s a space to unify all the fans of a certain idol group. Through a fanbase, a fans can interact with other fans. Apparently, some of our respondents (24.72%) admit that they are members of official fanbase. Among them, more than half (59.69%) actively participate in that fanbase they belong to. Furthermore, their activities in the fanbase are including sharing information (81.12%) and updating news (76.53%) about the idol group. Some other activities are even including collecting merchandise (43.88%), crowd-funding for event (32.65%), and making fanfiction (30.10%).

The third chapter of this survey report is about the media habit of Kpop fans. The most frequent media that Kpop fans access is Youtube (89.66%), while the second most is the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and all (74.15%). Television channel is the third most frequent media they access (54.22%), and it includes Korean television channels such as KBS World, Arirang TV, and many more. News portals such as Allkpop, Koreaboo, Seoul Beats, and more are the fourth most frequent media that Kpop fans access (40.10%), meanwhile the fifth is music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Sound Cloud, and many more. Moreover, many of our respondents (35.44%) access the media related to Kpop every day, with most of them spend about 1 to 6 hours in a day (64.06%) and some of them spend only less than 1 hour in a day (24.91%).

The fourth chapter of this survey is about the social media habit of Kpop fans, and this chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part we find that most of our respondents (67.21%) admit that they follow their favorite idol’s personal account on social media. More than half of them (59.90%) admit that they have ever updated a status about Kpop on their social media account. Hence the top three social media they use for updating status about Kpop are Facebook (68.21%), Instagram (45.86%), and Twitter (41.86%).

In the second part of the fourth chapter we find that more than half of our respondents (58.76%) admit that they have ever shared news or articles about Kpop on their social media account. The social media they use for sharing news or articles are Facebook (67.71%), Twitter (38.20%), and LINE (34.76%). In addition to that, apparently there are some diehard fans (21.44%) who admit that they even have particular social media account or blog intentionally made for fangirling or fanboying activity with an alias (not using their real name). They make that kind of account on Facebook (48.24%), Twitter (38.82%), and Instagram (37.65%).

The fifth part of this survey report is about some habit that Kpop fans have regarding to their fangirling or fanboying activity. Apparently, a few of them (19.805) admit that they frequently write a fanfiction about their favorite idol or group. There are also some of them (36.44%) who frequently buy the physical album (CD) of their favorite idol or group, meanwhile some other (32.03%) frequently buy the digital album instead of illegally download it. Some fans even take it further by buying the merchandise of their favorite idol or group (38.21%), while some other (26.99%) admit that they have attended a live concert of their favorite idol or group.

The last part of this survey report contains of some trivia we gather regarding to Kpop fans. Apparently, less than a half of our respondents (42.50%) admit that they use a certain product because their favorite idol is using or promoting it. There is also a few of them (9.71%) who admit that they have visited South Korea and being a Kpop fans is their main reason to go to that country (57.14%). Lastly, most of our respondents (66.71%) admit that they spend less than IDR 100,000 in a month for fangirling or fanboying activity, while some of them spend about IDR 100,000 to IDR 500,000 (24.72%) and a few others spend more than IDR 500,000 (8.58%).

For more detail you can download XLS report at the button below (Bahasa Indonesia). JAKPAT report consists of 3 parts which are 1) Respondent Profile, 2) Crosstabulation for each question and 3) Raw Data. Respondent profile shows you demographic profiles ( gender,age range, location by province, and monthly spending). Cross tabulation enables you to define different demographic segment preference on each answer.