The global anime industry is booming, and as a result, India is seeing a growth in its own fandom ecosystem. With Chennai’s recent success as a host city for Comic Con, we have seen the emergence of cosplay culture. Although cosplay's popularity is rapidly increasing, there has been little research on how cosplay influencers affect their fans' behavior in India. The current study investigates the extent to which cosplay influencers' credibility fosters parasocial relationships with fans, and how these relationships affect attitudes toward brands and purchase intentions. In addition to analyzing the influence of parasocial relationships, the study will examine how fandom identity affects these relationships, as well as the moderating effects of social media platforms and gender. A combination of offline and online data from anime fans in Chennai will be used and analyzed using advanced methods to reveal trends in fan behavior. The study’s findings will show how cosplaying influences marketing by using emotional connection and deeply held, culturally based identities to create engagement between fans and brands, with micro-influencers as facilitators of those interactions. Additionally, this research study will highlight brand alignment with fandom cultures and communities that drive brand engagement, as well as the matching of content to the unique social media platforms used by new generations of anime fans in South India.
M et al. (Thu,) studied this question.