Fitness influencers increasingly convert follower trust into purchasing behavior through seeding, group-buying, and social selling arrangements within South Korea’s hyperconnected, appearance-oriented digital ecosystem. Yet how they assess brand fit, manage authenticity, and navigate follower expectations remains underexamined. This study uses grounded theory to examine how fitness influencers with 500,000 or more followers navigate brand collaborations across these commercial formats. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 fitness influencers, and open, axial, and selective coding were applied to identify a paradigm model of collaborative decision-making. The findings suggest, from the influencers’ side, that brand-fit assessment is not an influencer–brand dyadic negotiation but a triadic process in which the follower community functions as an active third party, simulated in advance and verified through comments, direct messages, and purchase-verification behavior. Influencers who experienced authenticity crises subsequently institutionalized stricter, measurable disclosure and verification rules, while the deliberate disclosure of product flaws was reported by one participant to coincide with restored trust and better sales. These findings propose a reconceptualization of influencer–brand fit in social commerce as a dynamic, community-mediated negotiation rather than a static dyadic attribute, with implications for how brands and social commerce platforms may design influencer partnerships and disclosure strategies.

This study examines the psychological and social processes through which high-involvement sports fandom is associated with the subjective well-being of female spectators in South Korea’s professional KBO baseball league. Utilizing a secondary qualitative analysis informed by grounded-theory coding procedures, we investigate the dynamic processes, interaction strategies, and sociopsychological factors through which female spectators experience high-involvement fandom and how this engagement relates to their well-being. Data originally collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with nine highly involved, long-term female KBO spectators for a prior study on fandom formation were reanalyzed through systematic coding, employing the frameworks of bottom-up, hedonic, social, and eudaimonic well-being as structural guides. Results reveal a multidimensional paradigm of well-being generation: immediate hedonic well-being appears to be associated with dramatic game narratives and collective crowd dynamics, and relationships expand to foster social well-being through regional belonging and community solidarity. These dimensions shape the phenomenon of “fandom as an emotional sanctuary,” marked by collective identity integration and daily behavioral immersion. Despite threats to their well-being, fans employ active restoration strategies to re-engage. This pattern, observed within the bounded context of nine long-term KBO fans, points toward a possible pathway linking sustained fandom involvement to subjective well-being, characterized by emotional maturity and the assimilation of sports fandom into life’s meaning. These findings offer exploratory theoretical insights into the feminization of sports fandom and suggest that sports consumption may be relevant for modern psychological and social well-being.

Digital sport platforms increasingly mediate consumer experience through AI-driven interfaces, yet it remains unclear which interactive elements consumers treat as baseline expectations versus genuine engagement drivers. An integrated Kano-SERVQUAL model was applied to evaluate the service quality of virtual cycling platforms in this context. An online survey was conducted with 458 adults who regularly used a virtual cycling platform. Service quality attributes demonstrated a five-dimensional structure: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Twenty service attributes were classified following Kano’s model, and Better–Worse coefficients and a combined impact score were calculated to identify strategic priorities. Twenty attributes clustered into four distinct regions based on Timko’s Better–Worse matrix. One-Dimensional Quality (High Better, High Worse) included technical infrastructure attributes such as content updates, platform composition, data consistency, connection stability, and server stability under large-scale connections. Attractive Quality (High Better, Low Worse) was characterized by differentiating features, including event diversity, reflection of user suggestions, tutorial guide clarity, verified workout programs, and post-ride reports. Must-Be Quality (Low Better, High Worse) comprised graphics quality, UI convenience, and avatar design baseline attributes whose absence triggers high dissatisfaction, along with pedal resistance response (Reverse quality). Indifferent Quality (Low Better, Low Worse) encompassed attributes including technical support, testing tools, competitive systems, reward systems, and personalized recommendations, representing lower priority features. Thus, consumer engagement with AI-mediated digital sport platforms is structurally non-linear, requiring attribute-differentiated management strategies that distinguish trust-critical interface reliability from engagement-driving personalization. These findings offer theoretical implications for consumer decision-making in interactive digital commerce, though trust, engagement, and decision-making were not directly measured as outcome variables in this study.