Who are Monbebe: My Predictions

몬스타엑스 celebrating their 3rd year anniversary (May 14th 2018)

Preface: I made this survey for fun and for my own interest in things like who makes up fandoms and how those demographics effect fandom behaviors etc. I’m no expert in anything like this just a very passionate marketing major who’s been in fandoms since the Jonas Brothers released their cover of Year 3000. So, the thought of making a Monsta X survey for their fans to take came to mind one night and I couldn’t stop thinking of it, and here we are. I came up with all of the questions myself and had help with the Korean translations of those questions.

Biases: These are something I’m going to go more in depth about when I close the survey and go over the results, but I can already see a few as well as errors that were made on my part, which again is something I’ll go into more when everything is finished. (A bias is basically something that could skew/effect the results in a certain way etc)

Background: Monsta X is a group whose charms appeal to people all over the world. They’ve won Naver’s V-Live Global Top 10 two years in a row - 2017 & 2018 - with their largest followings being from the USA, Thailand, and Indonesia (V-Live). Monsta X show their true Global presence by having their second world tour in the summer of 2018; including 7 dates in the USA, 3 dates in Europe - a place many KPOP groups seem to not go to often - 5 in Asia and 4 shows in South America. Monsta X also attended KPOP KNIGHT in London in the beginning of 2018, and have frequented KCON for the last 2 years, performing at the following locations:

• Abu Dhabi 2016,

• Japan 2016

• LA 2016

• Mexico 2017

• Japan 2017

• Australia 2017

• Japan 2018

From my own observations, while Monsta X’s popularity is something that can be seen all over the world, their main markets* are South Korea, and Japan. In 2017 Monsta X made their official Japanese debut with a Japanese version of their song Hero. In Japan their signed under Universal Music’s label Mercury Tokyo (Hong) where they’ve released multiple original Japanese tracks and one album as of April 25th 2018. While they have not “officially debuted” (which I don’t see as necessary) in the United States I do believe that the US in another market they heavily appeal to and have a presence in. In 2017 The Clan part 2.5: Beautiful debuted at number one on Billboard’s World Albums Charts (Benjamin), The Connect: Deja Vu reaching the #2 spot on the same chart almost one year later (Pok).

*market = a place where a product (in this case Monsta X) is being advertised or promoted.

Predictions:

Demographics: Since Monsta X are such a global group, as you can see above, I'm expecting a variety of results from the languages fans speak to where fans live, but if I were to guess the top four languages spoken it would have to be: Korean, Japanese, English, and Thai. I also think a high percentage of non-Korean speakers may answer that they are learning or want to learn Korean so they could participate in more activities without having to wait for translations and actually understand what the members of Monsta X are communicating through Twitter, VLive, Fancafe etc. The age range of most fans I think will fall into the 18-24 years old range, with a heavily majority of those fans being female. Since most fans will probably fall into that age range it would also mean that many are also either students, part time workers, or maybe even both.

Most used social media: Twitter and Youtube

Year that most fans joined: I think most fans would have joined in either 2016 - with the release of All In - or in 2017 with the release of both Beautiful and Dramarama.

Top biases: Shownu, Minhyuk, Jooheon

Favorite title tracks (top 3): Beautiful, Dramarama, All in

Favorite album (top 2): The Clan part 2.5: Beautiful, The Clan Part.1

Favorite “Extra” Song: Shine Forever, BeMyFriend

Top soloist: Kihyun, Hyungwon, Shownu

Favorite units (top 3): Interstellar unit, From Zero unit, Rap Line

Whose style of songs do you like more Wonho or Jooheon: This is a hard question to judge but my feeling is that more people will pick Wonho.

I didn’t make predictions for every question but just the ones that I thought I could judge fairly well just from being a fan myself and seeing the reactions through the years. There’s still time to take and share the survey! So please follow this link to take the survey directly and this link to share the survey on Twitter!

Disclaimer: All thoughts are my own unless otherwise cited in the text. I am in no way affiliated with Monsta X or Starship Entertainment.