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The column "Know a little psychology" written by the teachers and students of the School of Psychology and Cognitive Science of East China Normal University, which works twice a week, focuses on current events and popular science knowledge, involving parenting education, family relations, career path and many other aspects. Apply psychology to daily life to make life more exciting.

Author/Yao Qi Associate Professor, School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University

　　　　　　　　Hao Heming, Undergraduate of School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University

Operation/Yang Xiao

In June, 2019, Sean Xiao became the "top traffic" in the current entertainment circle with her clever performance as the role of The Untamed, and the new drama came to the door, and the endorsement was soft. Who knows that after stepping into 2020, Sean Xiao, which should have ushered in the peak of its career, is not doing well. After experiencing the "227 Incident" at the beginning of the year, fans reported the AO3 platform and offended the circle of peers. The heat of this incident just subsided not long ago, and it happened that fans took advantage of their teachers’ profession to record videos for them, which once again pushed Sean Xiao to the forefront of public opinion. If the early "227 incident" was just a struggle for interests among different circles, the recent "teachers’ aid-seeking incident" has aroused extensive discussion among the whole people about rational idolize.

Figure/IC photo

Throughout the entertainment circle, it is not uncommon for fans to make some crazy moves to protect their idols. These behaviors that are difficult to understand in the eyes of non-fans have long been the norm in rice circles. We can’t help wondering why fans are so fanatical in the face of idols that have almost no intersection with their real life.

1 idolize pursues the "ideal self".

There is a question that often puzzles passers-by: Is it worthwhile for fans to pay so much for idols and get nothing in return? Idolize seems to be chasing a stranger who has nothing to do with our real life, but in fact, for fans, idolize is a process of "projecting" his ideal self onto his real idol. "Projection" refers to a psychological effect that an individual unconsciously reflects his own thoughts, attitudes, wishes and other personality characteristics on external things or others. Fans see the characteristics they yearn for in idols, and through the act of "chasing", they turn their yearning for this characteristic into a fascination with idols themselves.

Figure /unsplash

"idolize is actually chasing himself, and you are designing an ideal life for yourself." Sa Beining’s words can be said to hit home with many girls. For "career powder", idol is the person I want to be; For "mom powder", idols are the people I want to protect; For "girlfriend powder", the idol is the person I want to fall in love with. It is not difficult to understand why when idols are attacked by public opinion, fans will rush to the front line to defend, clarify, and even become keyboard players and people. Idol is the representative of ideal self. When questioned, fans will feel that they have been attacked and doubted. On the surface, fans are defending idols, but in essence they are defending themselves.

2 emotional flow between idols and fans from one-way to two-way

Earlier, the relationship between idols and fans was a kind of "quasi-social relationship", which was a one-way interpersonal relationship between viewers and screen characters. We go back 20 years, and the relationship between the popular national idols "Four Heavenly Kings", Jay Chou and others and their fans is a typical "quasi-social relationship". Because we like them, we will watch TV dramas starring them and listen to their records. This emotional flow is one-way, and fans have been following the footsteps of idols.

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But nowadays, fans are not satisfied with just appreciating their works. They need idols to respond to their efforts. As a result, offline fan meetings, handshakes and other activities to promote the two-way emotional flow between idols and fans came into being. These two-way interactions in real life make the new generation idols more like friends around fans, bring fans the truest sense of companionship, greatly narrow the psychological distance between idols and fans, and make fans and idols more viscous.

3 fan groups meet the sense of belonging in the era of high loneliness

People are not independent individuals, and each of us has a need for belonging to the group. However, in this era of high anxiety and loneliness, traditional social relations can no longer meet our needs. Our neighbors have not seen each other for many years, and colleagues rarely contact each other after work. It seems that we have been living alone. For the lack of a sense of belonging, we began to turn our attention to some non-traditional groups, and the fan group happened to be an excellent choice of "low threshold and high sense of belonging".

Unified fan names, unified supporting materials, making lists for data, buying magazines and endorsements … For fans, although everyone is a stranger from all corners of the country, these activities give everyone a unified label-"XX fans". This kind of label satisfies the fans’ need for a sense of belonging to the group, and constantly strengthens the fans’ sense of identity with their group.

It is found that "group identity" plays a key role in influencing the willingness of group members to participate in collective activities. Most people participate in group activities, not only because they expect the results of the activities, but also because they have a sense of identity with other members of the group. This sense of group identity also makes fans unconsciously divide themselves into different camps-"inner group" and "outer group".

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"Inner group" refers to the group in which a person often participates, or lives, works or carries out other activities, and has emotional identity and a strong sense of belonging; "Outer group" refers to all social groups except "inner group", and it is a group where people have no participation or sense of belonging. For fans, a group that likes the same idol can become an "inner group", while those who like other stars are classified as "outer groups".

In order to satisfy the sense of self-esteem, individuals tend to treat the "inner group" to which they belong more positively, while people generally have contempt, provocation or hatred for the "outer group", that is, "inner group preference" and "hostility to the outer group". On social platforms such as Weibo, we often see friction among fans, fighting for ranking in the leaderboard today and for poster C tomorrow. Fans don’t judge objectively like judges. All they have to do is to defend themselves, protect the inner group, and then "step on" the outer group intentionally or unintentionally, so as to satisfy their sense of self-esteem as members of the group.

4 The advantages and disadvantages of fan culture for society

With the rise of Internet star-making craze, more and more traffic stars have come into public view, and people’s comments on idolize’s behavior are always mixed. In fact, fan culture has both advantages and disadvantages for the development of society. On the one hand, in order to help idols get more exposure channels, the scale of fans’ support activities is increasing, and one activity calls resources from all sides to promote the development of various industries. In addition, in order to improve the popularity of idols and establish a positive image, fans will spontaneously raise money and participate in public welfare activities in the name of idols. It is undeniable that this is a new positive driving force for social development.

On the other hand, because the emotions of fans in the collective are easily amplified by infection, and at the same time, the anonymity of the network will weaken people’s sense of social responsibility and self-control, and the frequent network abuse wars of fans under the herd mentality have caused serious network pollution, which has brought inevitable negative effects to teenagers who have just come into contact with the network and have no clear view of right and wrong. This is also the reason why some people regard fan groups as "network cancer".

Figure /unsplash

Nowadays, fan culture has become a part of social culture, but the rapid development of fan culture in China is only a few years. In recent years, the explosive talent show has officially brought the "internet star-making" model into public view, and people have begun to discuss "idols" and "traffic stars" extensively. At present, the mode of creating idol groups by entertainment companies is constantly improving, and the management and development of fan groups are also constantly improving and standardizing. How the fan culture will develop in the future is worth looking forward to with a positive attitude.

One year after the layoffs, the Indian hotel chain OYO is ready to go public.

On October 1st, OYO formally submitted a prospectus to the Indian Securities and Exchange Commission (SEBI), with a target of raising about $1.2 billion and a valuation of $9 billion.

This hotel brand, which was highly praised by Sun Zhengyi, was once defeated in the China market. OYO, which is plagued by scandals such as massive layoffs, executives leaving, and declining reputation for service quality, still has a loss hole of $526 million in the prospectus submitted today. Looking back on its three years of market expansion in China, OYO had to "retreat" in a despondent way because it had not found a sustainable and profitable business model and a lot of complaints from domestic hotel owners and guests.

Nowadays, OYO is eager to go public, raising nearly $1.2 billion to make up for the loss loophole. However, this can only alleviate the temporary need, and according to the previous loss rate, it is only enough for two years.

Tracing the development history of OYO in China, we can find that its hematopoietic capacity has been questioned.

This Indian-born budget hotel chain, led by Ritesh Agarwal (Chinese name: Tae-Hee Lee), the founder of the post-90s generation, has had a smooth journey.　

Since its establishment in 2013, OYO has completed 20 rounds of financing, with the total amount of financing exceeding 42 billion yuan. Among the investment institutions, Softbank Group, which has participated in seven rounds of financing, currently holds 46.62% of the shares and remains the largest shareholder of OYO.　

Thanks to the capital, OYO’s overseas expansion has shown a rapid trend. It took only eight years to spread all over more than 30 countries around the world, and its number of stores exceeded 23,000 and the number of rooms exceeded 157,000, making OYO the third largest hotel chain brand in the world, and it was regarded as a super unicorn.　

In 2017, OYO set foot on the journey of China market, adhering to the consistent high efficiency, covering 300 cities in China in one and a half years, and expanding the number of stores to 10,000. However, OYO, which has not yet gained a firm foothold, is facing an epidemic. The huge loss of $197 million forced OYO to temporarily give up the "big cake" of China.　

Judging from the prospectus submitted this time, the loss problem of OYO has not been solved, and the operation mode and crazy expansion of "cutting meat" have caused OYO to fall into a hematopoietic dilemma. If this situation cannot be changed, Tae-Hee Lee’s trip to ring the bell will be suspended.　

This super unicorn from India seems a little unaccustomed in China.　

In March, 2020, OYO was exposed to the news of massive layoffs and the resignation of senior executives in China. First of all, the 11 regions in China will be merged into 7 regions, and the number of HUBs will be reduced from 48 to 30. The number of employees in the company has been reduced from 9,800 in 2019 to more than 2,700, and the reduction rate is as high as 72%.　

At the same time, at that time, OYO’s seven VP/SVP members who participated in the early establishment of the China team had left five, and CXO members who joined later left three.　

The number of OYO’s stores in China has suddenly decreased due to internal turmoil. According to AI Finance & Economics, there are only more than 3,500 stores in China, which is nearly two-thirds less than the peak period.　

And OYO’s retreat from China seems to be a thunderstorm, but in fact it has a warning.　

As early as June 2019, OYO began to promote the layoff plan. At that time, the layoff rate had reached 50%, many front-line operation teams were laid off, and several core executives including Xiaoming Fu and feng han also left their jobs one after another.　

Combined with the financial report data released in February 2020, its loss amount expanded from $52 million to $335 million, of which China lost $197 million, accounting for more than 58%.　

In addition, the service and quality of OYO-affiliated hotels have also been criticized by consumers in China, because most hotels were previously poorly run or had outdated facilities, and the service quality control could not be guaranteed. There are thousands of complaints about black cats, such as disputes among hotel owners, substandard hygiene and bad service attitude.　

Nevertheless, OYO has not completely abandoned the China market. According to the prospectus, OYO included China and the United States in the list for evaluating future growth markets.　

However, OYO, which has been labeled as layoffs and poor service quality, is still too early to return to the China market.　

Judging from the prospectus, OYO is still at a loss stage.　

As of the end of March this year, OYO’s revenue was about 534 million US dollars, with a loss of 526 million US dollars. Looking forward to the data of the two fiscal years, the revenue was $841 million and $1.749 billion, respectively, while the loss reached $315 million and $1.745 billion, respectively, and the total loss in the three fiscal years was about $2 billion.　

The loss is expanding, but the revenue is decreasing, which makes people doubt OYO’s hematopoietic capacity.　

According to the prospectus, the main source of OYO’s revenue at present is the sale of accommodation services, which is its old bank’s "OEM" service. As a hotel chain platform, OYO does not participate in building hotels and buying hotels, but chooses to let hotels join in, carry out unified transformation and management for them, and does not charge franchise fees, so as to expand its stores.　

It can be seen from the domestic development track that OYO has not yet explored a sustainable and profitable business model.　

In the initial stage of expansion, OYO launched the 1.0 version of the light asset joining model. In order to attract hotel owners to join OYO, the expected profit is usually falsely reported. For example, for a hotel with a maximum of 1.5 million yuan at the peak of the year, the brand salesman usually puts forward a guaranteed amount of 2 million yuan/year to the hotel owner.　

In order to achieve this false high traffic data, hotels will make use of the management loopholes of early manual order entry to falsify the number of orders. According to the previous report of Zinc Finance, some interviewees directly said that "once the owner told the front desk in front of me how many orders only needed to be entered, and there was no need to record them after that".　

After the launch of the 2.0 model, OYO will optimize the sharing model, and the guaranteed income will share risks and benefits according to the hotel’s past income. However, the strong management mechanism of this model soon intensified the direct contradiction between the platform and the hotel owners. Under the 2.0 mode, OYO has independent and safe pricing power for hotels. In order to improve the off-season occupancy rate, OYO has forced many hotel owners to become "suckers" to bear the losses.　

Regardless of the 1.0 or 2.0 model, OYO has never given a reasonable business model, which has also made it lose ground in the China market.　

After OYO withdrew from the China market, although the loss decreased, it still existed. In the final analysis, it was due to the business model. The model of sharing risks and benefits is difficult to adapt to the market. Coupled with the competitive pressure in the hotel chain market, OYO’s desire to return to the China market may be just empty talk.　

This article is from WeChat WeChat official account "Zinc Finance" (ID: xincaijing). Author: Hu Yutong, authorized by 36Kr.