Transformative Topics July 2026

In recognition of the global excitement surrounding the World Cup, we feature the article by Yuhei Inoue, Mikihiro Sato, Steve Swanson, Daniel Lock, James Du, and Daniel C. Funk, “Psychosocial resources linking consumer identification and social well-being: Integrating the social identity approach with transformative service research,” published in the Journal of Business Research.

In the spirit of TCR’s newsletter, Yuhei reflects on the backstory of this article, explaining how the project emerged from an interest in sport fandom and its impact on consumers’ social well-being. He highlights the World Cup as a vivid example of shared social identity and points to broader implications for understanding how fandom can shape consumer well-being:

Many consumers follow sport teams as fans, and the success of their favorite teams can significantly influence their psychological states. Moreover, supporting a sport team can serve as an important source of shared social identity, which can lead consumers to develop a sense of belonging to fellow fans, supporter groups, local communities, and even the nation. This is exemplified by the FIFA men’s World Cup taking place in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The surprising successes of the national teams of Cabo Verde, DR Congo, and Norway during the tournament—and the collective sense of excitement, passion, and pride fostered among their fans—have demonstrated the power of sport fandom to unite people and communities.

Despite this significance of sport fandom in consumers’ lives, there have been surprisingly limited efforts in the service and consumer literature to examine how consumers’ support for a sport team affects their well-being. Recognizing this gap as an important opportunity to advance the literature, my co-authors and I studied the relationship between consumer identification with sport teams and social well-being and published our findings in the Journal of Business Research in 2025.

We chose the United States and the United Kingdom as study sites, as both countries have some of the world’s most popular sport leagues. Yet, these countries differ in terms of the popularity of certain sports (e.g., American football in the U.S. versus soccer in the UK) and social systems like healthcare, making comparisons between the two countries meaningful. Despite those differences, we found the same psychosocial processes linking consumer identification to social well-being among sport fans in both countries, which may suggest that there are some universal mechanisms through which sport fandom affects social well-being.

Through this 2025 article, our hope is to highlight sport fandom as an important context for developing knowledge about how service consumption uplifts or diminishes consumers’ well-being—a fundamental inquiry in transformative consumer and service research. Specifically, while our work focused on the well-being benefits of sport fandom, we call for more research to understand how fandom may reduce well-being (for example, following the loss of a favorite team) and what managerial strategies may help alleviate its negative psychological consequences.

Read: Inoue, Y., Sato, M., Swanson, S., Lock, D., Du, J., & Funk, D. C. (2025). Psychosocial resources linking consumer identification and social well-being: Integrating the social identity approach with transformative service research. Journal of Business Research, 195, 115361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115361

Abstract: This research integrates the social identity approach (SIA) to health and well-being with Transformative Service Research to explore how group-based psychosocial resources mediate the relationship between consumers’ identification with service organizations and their social well-being. Two studies with US and UK consumers of sport organizations found that purpose and meaning, perceived pro-group norms, and in-group trust functioned as mediators between consumer identification and social well-being. In addition, in-group trust served as an immediate mediator, transmitting the effects of purpose and meaning as well as perceived pro-group norms on social well-being. These findings contribute to Transformative Service Research by illustrating group-level psychological processes for promoting consumer well-being, activated through social identification with service organizations. This perspective advances current understanding of how service organizations engage consumers as in-group members to foster their well-being, extending the application of the SIA to health and well-being in business and service research.

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