Cultivating hope

Abstract

Building on prior theorizing on hope, dramaturgy of emotions, and the notion of transfiguration, this paper examines how the Weight Watchers brand elicits and embodies hope among its consumers. Based on the findings from a qualitative study of Weight Watchers, the authors propose a three-stage conceptualization of brand-centric hope cultivation. This conceptualization highlights the importance of collective processes in hope emergence, elevation, and emplacement in which religious vernacular guides how Weight Watchers express and experience brand-centric hope.

Keywords

Emotional branding hope weight loss qualitative interviews

How does a brand come to elicit and embody hope for highly uncertain outcomes, such as weight loss? Hope is arguably “a marketable entity that affects the economic viability of many industries” (MacInnis and de Mello, 2005: 1), including those promoting weight-loss pills, cosmetics, or even magnetic bracelets (de Mello and MacInnis, 2005). However, apart from some recent research (Wang et al., 2013), most scholarship has focused on understanding the consequences rather than the antecedents of hope for information processing, search, and choice (de Mello et al., 2007; Winterich and Haws, 2011). Such a conceptual focus is largely due to reliance on cognitively oriented appraisal theory, the dominant theoretical framework on understanding hope, which treats emotions as a result of individuals’ cognitive evaluations of their environments (Lazarus, 1999). Indeed, as MacInnis and de Mello (2005: 3) point out, in the appraisal-theoretic framework hope is “an emotion attached not to … a brand … but to a goal” and forego the possibility of understanding the relevant process whereby a brand might come to embody and elicit hope.

In this paper, we develop a dramaturgical theorization about brand-centric hope cultivation. Our theorization builds on Durkheim’s (1915/1965) notion of transfiguration as well as research on hope, religion, and branding. Congruent with prior studies, which posit that interactions among a brand’s consumers contribute to brand-centric emotions (Cova and Pace, 2006; Schau et al., 2009), we find that among the North American Weight Watchers members interviewed and observed in this study, the feeling of hope is a result of collective, rather than just intra-psychic processes. In line with dramaturgical theorizing on emotions (Turner and Stets, 2005), interactions among Weight Watchers members, group leaders, and even Weight Watchers non-members all play a role in inducing and enhancing hope. These findings are congruent with the view that hope is an emotion with religious roots (e.g., Cartwright, 2004), as well as with the idea that brands resonate in light of religious vernacular and worldview (e.g., Belk and Tumbat, 2005; Kozinets, 2001).

Theorizing brand-centric hope cultivation

Marketplace-mediated quest for hope

Hope is a commodity in the marketplace. Products ranging from hair-loss remedies to magnetic bracelets promise hope in that “something positive, which does not presently apply to one’s life, could still materialize” (Lazarus, 1999: 653). Brands such as Weight Watchers may be particularly attractive for those hoping to lose weight. Weight Watchers is distinct from its competitors such as Jenny Craig or LA Weight Loss because the service revolves around the support of fellow consumers who share a moral career and a yearning for weight loss (Bradford et al., 2013). Given the importance of fellow consumers as vehicles of oversight (Beruchashvili and Moisio, forthcoming; Moisio and Beruchashvili, 2010), the mere presence of other consumers in the Weights Watchers context may invoke hope, with the underlying idea that hope cannot be achieved alone, but rather through one’s union with others (Benzein and Saveman, 1998). Construal of hope in the American historic-cultural milieu is predicated on the view that hope requires relationships and connections to others who share similar fates (Delbanco, 1999). Some even equate group environments with the personal experience of hope (Vugia, 1991), suggesting per Braithwaite (2004: 128) that “when individuals seek to achieve an outcome as a group, hope is inevitably involved.”

By fostering access to other consumers with similar desires, brands such as Weight Watchers can promote yearning and conviction that losing weight is nevertheless possible. Group contexts foster consumers’ sense of being needed, offer valued support, and restore independence (e.g., Liu et al., 2010). Beyond this, research consistently finds that groups can elevate feelings of hope (e.g., Herth, 2000). Groups cultivate hope as they afford consumers the opportunity to give meaning to their psychological, social, or physical adversity (e.g., Mascaro and Rosen, 2005), and enable individuals to focus on moving forward rather than dwelling on their condition. Espousing hope, however, requires that the group interactions among a brand’s consumers resonate at a deeper level.

Religion and hope

Hope is an emotion ingrained in Christianity. It is one of the foundational Christian virtues tied to notions of salvation and transcendence (Cartwright, 2004). Religious underpinnings of hope manifest across numerous contexts. For instance, research on individuals experiencing illness underscores the association between individuals’ religious affiliation and the feeling of hope (e.g., Bellamy et al., 2007). The religious framing of hope is similarly evident in how consumers assign meaning to difficult life events (Nedderman et al., 2010), as well as in how belief in the ability to overcome obstacles set on individuals’ path is fostered when hope is framed in religious terms (e.g., Ai et al., 2004). Moreover, the religious foundation of hope may be functional because it helps shift consumers’ focus to the process of pursuing outcomes. Hope for weight loss can be construed in religious terms such as pilgrimage, wherein dieters imagine themselves on a shared journey in search of the promise of wellness (Cartwright, 2004).

The idea that the Christian religious vernacular gives meaning to hope suggests that hope is a secular emotion with sacred undertones. Throughout consumer culture, hope is sacralized in light of religious metaphors, notions, and rituals ingrained in intellectual traditions of the Western cultures (Belk et al., 1989). We therefore advocate the view that religion offers a potent symbolic resource, a reservoir for defining the individual’s experiences and displays of hope (Watts et al., 2006). The view that religion permeates even non-religious consumers’ brand relationships and language is evidenced by prior research. Religious vernacular is at work in reviving a brand abandoned by its manufacturer (Muñiz and Schau, 2005), giving meaning to a brand and its followers (e.g., Belk and Tumbat, 2005), or even providing a meaning system for the brand’s dominance over its users’ volition, guilt alleviation, and successes in weight loss (Moisio and Beruchashvili, 2010).

Hope cultivation as a dramaturgical process

To understand how a brand such as Weight Watchers may draw on religious vernacular to cultivate hope, we turn to the dramaturgical theorizing on emotions (e.g., Turner and Stets, 2005). Congruent with the conceptualization that hope is a social, consumption-centric emotion (Beruchashvili and Moisio, 2013), the dramaturgy-of-emotions theorizing emphasizes the role of structural factors (Cartwright, 2004; Lively and Heise, 2004). Influences of large-scale social structures such as religion on emotional experience and expression are mediated via smaller groups or institutions (Gordon, 1990). Emotions, accordingly, are experienced in relation to the actual or imagined presence of social others whom Denzin (2007: 3) calls “emotional interactants.” Displays of emotion in groups also often amount to attempts to influence others as well as the self (Heise and O'Brien, 1993). For instance, the display of optimism by mountain-climbing tour guides is an attempt to influence consumers (Tumbat, 2011).

Dramaturgical theorizing posits that emotional experience and expression are filtered through emotion culture (Turner and Stets, 2006), “a group’s set of beliefs, vocabulary, regulative norms, and other ideational resources pertaining to emotion” (Gordon, 1989: 322). We propose that religion permeates Weight Watchers’ emotion culture. Experiences and expression of hope in such a view are indirectly guided by religious vernacular-infused feeling rules, framing rules, and emotion work. For instance, emotion work, the acts of trying to feel emotions appropriate to a situation (Hochschild, 1983), may structure how Weight Watchers display hope to themselves and to others. We also propose that religious vernacular structures hope by guiding Weight Watchers to formulate and rely on shared feeling rules (Hochschild, 1979). These feeling rules stipulate how and when Weight Watchers ought to feel hope. Religious vernacular may also influence hope through framing rules, the shared conventions about ascribing meaning or definitions to situations (Hochschild, 2003). Thus, religious vernacular may structure hope through Weight Watchers’ emotion work, feeling rules, and framing rules embedded in the brand’s emotion culture.

Transfiguration of brands as repositories of hope

Understanding how a brand might become charged with emotion requires recourse to the notion of transfiguration (e.g., Durkheim, 1915/1965). According to Durkheim, the notion of transfiguration suggests that a society and the transcendental spirits that many societies worship are one and the same thing. The belief in religion and transcendental notions is, in Durkheim’s view, simply a misguided lay intuition that results from tendencies to attribute the cause of emotion-laden episodes to an outside entity. The group interprets its emotional experiences in lieu of notions about a transcendental being and attributes the cause of its experiences to an imaginary construct a group calls its god. The material items associated with such events similarly become religious “totems” that embody the emotional energies associated with religious rituals. A secular reading of the transfiguration principle suggests that when Watchers undergo hope-laden interactions at meetings, they would be inclined to attribute hope to the brand, effectively treating it as an emotional totem.

The transfiguration principle has received support in the research on brands that deal with collectivities. Indeed, some claim that a “brand is a powerful totem that regathers its loyal users into a contemporary clan. Members of the clan share an affinity that situates them in a common experience of belonging” (Brown et al., 2003: 29). The view that belonging or the group’s “consciousness of kind” (Muñiz and O'Guinn, 2001) may in fact occur around the shared emotional experiences is therefore not without precedent. We suggest that a brand may also become a convenient symbol that organizes a brand’s consumers’ emotional experiences very much like religious symbols do. Prior research on Weight Watchers is supportive of such an assertion. Among its members, Weight Watchers assign punitive powers to the brand (Moisio and Beruchashvili, 2010), a finding indicative of an underlying transfiguration process, where the actions and emotions aroused during Weight Watchers meetings are transferred to the brand. Thus, we posit that the processes that give rise to appraisals enhancing hope also fuel the transfiguration of the Weight Watchers brand as reflection of its members’ hopes.

Research procedures

In line with the methodological strategy to choose research contexts due to their potential to offer theoretical insights (Arnould et al., 2006), we focused on the Weight Watchers brand. Weight Watchers operates a service that helps its consumers to lose weight, a highly uncertain yet possible outcome that may be linked to hope (de Mello and MacInnis, 2005). In this context, our data collection involved a combination of non-participant observation and long interviews. The first author conducted non-participant observation at 143 Weight Watchers weekly group meetings across three different locations in a midsized city in the American Midwest, as well as interviewing 40 Weight Watchers consumers over a period of approximately 2 years (See Table 1). In line with the recommendations for conducting market-oriented ethnographies (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994), while attending weekly meetings, each covering a 30–45-minute-long period, the first author observed the members and their interactions with one another, with the group leader, or with the Weight Watchers staff before, during, and after the meeting. The first author also triangulated observations across three sites, days of the week, and times of the day.

Table 1.

Description of the informants.

Pseudonym	Age	Ethnicity	Occupation	Education	Marital status	Household income
Abigail	24	Caucasian	Graduate student	Masters in progress	Married	$30,000–39,000
Agatha	38	Caucasian	Graduate student	PhD in progress	Single	$30,000–39,000
Agnes	53	Caucasian	Secretary	Some college	Married	$30,000–39,000
Bernice	44	Caucasian	Non-profit volunteer	Bachelors	Married	$60,000–69,000
Bessie	60	Caucasian	Administrative assistant	Associates degree	Divorced	$30,000–39,000
Bonnie	53	Caucasian	Administrative technician	Some college	Single	$40,000–49,000
Brianna	47	Caucasian	Research technologist	Masters	Divorced	$30,000–39,000
Candice	56	Caucasian	Sales associate	Some college	Married	NA
Cecilia	22	Caucasian	Clinical training aid	High school	Single	$30,000–39,000
Chloe	54	Caucasian	Administrative coordinator	Bachelors	Married	$70,000–79,000
Daisy	52	Caucasian	Assistant coordinator	Some graduate study	Married	$50,000–59,000
Darlene	32	Caucasian	Administrative support	Bachelors	Married	NA
Dolores	33	Caucasian	Assistant professor	PhD	Married	$70,000–79,000
Eden	23	Caucasian	Graduate student	Masters in progress	Single	$20,000–29,000
Elenor	54	Caucasian	Aging specialist	Bachelors	Married	$80,000–89,000
Erica	52	Caucasian	Schoolteacher	Bachelors	Married	$90,000–99,000
Francis	59	Caucasian	Social worker	Some college	Widowed	$40,000–49,000
Ginger	57	Caucasian	Self employed	Some college	Married	$40,000–49,000
Haley	52	Caucasian	Public relations specialist	Masters	Married	$70,000–79,000
Harriet	26	Caucasian	Graduate research assistant	Masters	Partnership	$50,000–59,000
Isis	38	Caucasian	Graduate recruitment director	Masters	Single	$110,000 and over
Jade	30	African American	Graduate student	Masters in progress	Single	$20,000–29,000
Jasmine	31	African American	Research chemist	PhD in progress	Single	$20,000–29,000
Kate	58	Caucasian	Secretary	Some college	Married	$50,000–59,000
Keara	50	Caucasian	Retail store manager	Some college	Married	$50,000–59,000
Leah	30	Caucasian	Schoolteacher	Bachelors	Single	$30,000–39,000
Lindsey	50	Caucasian	Center coordinator	Bachelors	Married	$90,000–99,000
Margo	53	Caucasian	Housewife	High school	Married	$110,000 and over
Mindy	46	Caucasian	Schoolteacher	Masters	Married	$50,000–59,000
Nora	36	Caucasian	Administrative technician	Some college	Married	$40,000–49,000
Pamela	47	Caucasian	Housewife	Some college	Married	$40,000–49,000
Renee	56	Caucasian	Administrative support	Some college	Married	$110,000 and over
Selma	43	Hispanic	Housewife	High school	Married	$40,000–49,000
Shannon	41	Caucasian	Receptionist	High school	Partnership	$30,000–39,000
Sydney	59	Caucasian	Retired	Some college	Married	$50,000–59,000
Tammy	29	Caucasian	Schoolteacher	Bachelors	Single	$40,000–49,000
Trish	50	Caucasian	School cafeteria worker	High school	Married	$30,000–39,000
Veda	46	African American	Social worker	Bachelors	Divorced	$40,000–49,000
Whitney	33	Caucasian	Graduate student	Masters in progress	Single	$20,000–29,000
Yolanda	27	Caucasian	Receptionist	Some college	Single	$20,000–29,000

To gain insight into Weight Watchers consumers’ perspectives, we adopted the long interview method (McCracken, 1988). We recruited informants at meetings or through snowball sampling. Our sample includes lifetime members who have reached their Weight Watchers’ target weights, and regular members who have not yet reached their target weights and pay a fee to attend group meetings. The first author conducted interviews using an interview guide. Each interview began with the “grand tour” questions about the informant’s past experiences with excess weight and weight loss, and gradually focused on eliciting information on how the interactions and relationships evolving at the weekly Weight Watchers meetings contributed to the informant’s experiences of hope. Each interview lasted between one to one and a half hours and involved the use of follow-up probes to bring out extended experiential commentary.

Our data analysis follows the extended case methodology (Burawoy, 1998). We entered all interview transcripts into the Nud*Ist software package for qualitative data analysis, and through the process of coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1990) we sought to keep track and to organize our dataset systematically. During the analysis, we traced the patterns in the dataset relative to religious notions associated with hope. Through iterations, we sought out cases converging and diverging from our codes, highlighting experiences of hope and their religious underpinnings. Later, we scrutinized the codes, and collapsed smaller codes into larger ones in light of the emerging theoretical model (Spiggle, 1994). Insights were gained through comparison of non-participant observation data with the interview data (Arnould and Wallendorf, 1994). The findings we discuss next are the end result of our data analysis.

Findings

Light at the end of the tunnel: Predestination narrative and hope emergence

To have hope is to turn away from despair. This requires, in line with the theory of hope (MacInnis and de Mello, 2005), processes that convert impossibility into possibility, despair into hope. The notion of Calvinistic predestination (Mueller, 2003), which entails eternal damnation for some and salvation for others, offers a narrative that shapes how Weight Watchers experience their relationship to themselves and their commitment to achieving weight loss through Weight Watchers. The predestination narrative also invites consumers to search for outside sources of symbolic salvation, such as Weight Watchers.

Sin

Among our informants, despair emerges from the internalization of the framing rule of bodily fat as sin (Stearns, 2002). This view is evident in how informants label themselves: “We’re all sinners here … we’re not here’ cause we [have] done somethin’ good,” remarks 53-year-old Agnes, who joined Weight Watchers in the hope of losing 40 pounds. Agnes’ self-identification as a “sinner” alludes to the cultural expectation that being overweight is a physical sign of moral failure (e.g., Bordo, 1993). Like sinners, they are left to describe excess weight as a burden. Such feeling rule that weight ought to be experienced as something members must carry around yet are incapable of getting rid of on their own was expressed by Candice: “ … fat, it’s, it’s satanic … it can be deadly … hard to fight it … I do feel hopeless at times.” Candice is a 56-year-old Weight Watcher on a mission to lose at least 50 pounds and who compares her fatness to the Biblical incarnation of evil.

Weight Watchers also evoke the framing rule that being overweight is retribution for sin. It is rooted in the commonly shared fatalism that our informants learn to feel about their excess poundage. Because disciplining the appetite and the body is everyone’s moral responsibility (Thompson and Hirschman, 1995), the overweight status that Weight Watchers have brought upon themselves represents a punishment for their sins as revealed by Bernice: “ … maybe it’s like punishment … punishment from God or something, after abusing your body for so many years, feeding it with crap, … and it [weight] won’t just go away.” Bernice is a 44-year-old Weight Watcher who has become a member for the second time and is still struggling to take off 40 extra pounds. She recruits the religious notion of divine retribution, which punishes evil deeds and rewards good ones. Bernice’s sentiment is shaped through the framing of penance that past moral transgressions against the body have earned her. She knows to feel bad in consequence. Bernice’s emotional distress is conditioned by the realization that, by neglecting the moral duty of bodily care (e.g., Saguy and Gruys, 2010), she has sealed her destiny and has to wage an enduring battle with body fat. This emotional duress is even more prominent when compared to the joy of thinness—another feeling rule conditioned by cultural glorification of slimness (Wolf, 2002).

Curse

Closely aligned with the notion of punishment for sin is another religious notion, curse, which fuels Weight Watchers’ tendency to view the brand as a purveyor of hope. The idea of the curse captures the belief that excess weight, as the sign of divine penalty, is inescapable. Once afflicted with overweight, Weight Watchers believe they will not be able to rid easily of it. Although the notion of curse gives meaning to Weight Watchers’ unending struggle, at the same time, it fuels sense of desperation:

I’ve tried losing weight my whole life. … some days, I get up in the morning, I jump on the scale, it’s in my bathroom, I weigh myself the first thing in the morning. Some days, I just think why, why can’t I just wake up, and see it’s [weight] gone. Why I, have this, struggle, you know … it just sweeps over me, feels hopeless, like, there’s no salvation, you know, I’ll just smell food and it’s gonna end up on my hips. … just don’t wanna get into my clothes, don’t wanna look in the mirror, don’t wanna go to work, just don’t feel like getting on with my day.

This informant, Darlene, refers to herself as a “hopeless dieter” since she keeps regaining, unable to maintain weight loss for an extended period, an experience familiar to other informants as well. Like Darlene, many informants have been in Weight Watchers previously, but after regaining weight, they stopped adhering to the diet regimen and attending group meetings. In Darlene’s story, the battle with weight is a source of despair such that at times it affects her day-to-day functioning. Like others, Darlene aligns her emotions with the feeling rule of hope, the elusive prospect that someday the unwanted weight may disappear upon awakening, the yearning that animates ritualistic weighing every morning. The exclamation that there seems to be “no salvation” connotes to the emotional state in which “the pain of despair … lies in the fact that a hope is there, but no way opens up towards its fulfillment” (Moltmann, 1967: 23).

The notion of curse helps frame the Weight Watchers brand as a source of symbolic salvation. For our informants, curse is the causative force that incapacitates them: despite zealous attempts, excess weight prevails. They feel emotional surrender and abandon as they run out of patience, resolve, and faith that long-lasting weight loss is attainable: “After dieting for so long, I’ve spent so much time, money too, money went into it too, I just stopped believing it’s ever gonna happen. I pretty much threw up my hands in the air,” says 27-year-old Yolanda, who has been a “yo-yo” dieter since her teens and believes herself to be under the spell of curse:

I have tried … God knows, as long as I remember myself, I am always losing weight … but … it’s like I’m cursed or something … I’ve always been pudgy, and … it just [weight loss] won’t stick. … so, I, maybe it’s not in my cards, what else … maybe I just should give up in despair.

As Yolanda desperately seeks to understand why weight loss evades her, she recruits the notion of predestination, the Biblical manifestation of providential wrath against evil that teaches her to feel as if she has somehow earned her corpulence. Yolanda evokes the religious idea of predestination (“not in my cards”), which is her last meaning-making resort given that she has struggled with weight loss for such a long time. The predestination narrative gains traction because weight loss “won’t stick.” Something that acts as a proof of a curse thereby provides an explanation rooted in the supernatural that requires no actual proof.

Hell

Beyond the vernacular of sin and curse, our informants also evoke the notion of hell to convey pains entailed by their weight loss pursuit. Indeed, we encounter grim references to hell to describe this despair in a number of the informants’ interviews. Sinners hope for salvation, because the alternative is damnation to hell—physical and spiritual death. Daisy evokes the notion of hell to explain her state of despair:

I have over 100 pounds that I gotta lose. But if I can lose 50, even 30, I’m pre-diabetic, and if I don’t lose weight, I sure will become diabetic. My eyesight too, it’s been always bad … and, well, if I don’t lose some weight, my sugars will spike, so, you know, over the years, that can affect my eyesight … I don’t wanna go blind, I can’t (chokes up) … when I think about, you know, I get so depressed … It’s like a deep pit, I feel like sucked in it. … I need, maybe they [Weight Watchers] can save me.

To Daisy, a 52-year-old Weight Watcher who has been overweight since adolescence, being obese is akin to a life in hell. Daisy has been in Weight Watchers 10 times prior to re-joining recently, hoping to lose 100 pounds. Daisy experiences her overweight condition as being sucked into a “deep pit,” alluding to the depiction of the Biblical hell, the pit in which sinners are mired without hope for salvation. When Daisy elaborated on a grave consequence in the form of weakened eyesight during the interview, she got emotional to the point of tearing up. Daisy has considered bariatric surgery, but opted for “natural” weight loss with Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers emerges as her salvation from a metaphoric hell.

The inclination to see Weight Watchers as the gateway to weight loss is linked to the experience that consumers feel that they have exhausted all other options. Many members indeed believe they have tried everything else, designating the Weight Watchers group as their “last hope” as several of our informants do. Veda explains: “I told myself, I’ll try this [Weight Watchers] one last time … kinda like last hope, after that, that’s it, for me, it’s over, I’m done trying!” Despite the fatalistic undertone, this interjection brings to the fore our informants’ deep yearning for Weight Watchers to bring them out of the depths of the darkness into which they have metaphorically fallen. Some members even imagine the group will help eradicate their overweight condition for good. Weight Watchers offers light at the end of the tunnel, a viewpoint expressed by Candice:

I know it can run me to the grave … it’s devastating to think about it. I’m hoping to lose some weight here [Weight Watchers] … to see some light at the end of this, to just, to just bounce back to living, instead of, worrying I’m gonna die.

Candice recruits the religious imagery of light as she describes Weight Watchers as a glimmer in darkness. Weight Watchers emerges as her guiding light, the remote chance to overcome the afflictions of the overweight state: respiratory complications and immobility due to pain in the spine and joints. The deeper religious metaphor underlies Candice’s jeremiad: Weight Watchers resembles the transitional space between hell and paradise. Weight Watchers thus emerges as a brand that can erase Weight Watchers’ disconsolate condition. Thus, desperation and the feeling of past trials fuel our informants’ belief that the Weight Watchers brand offers them a gateway to lose weight. It offers them a promise of symbolic salvation and a chance of achieving eventual weight loss.

“I’m a real convert now”: Hope elevation through conversion

A conversion process is needed to elevate hope. This conversion process involves acquiring a new identity as well as an associated belief system as suggested by prior research (Snow and Machalek, 1984). Undergoing a spiritual rebirth means that dieters learn to associate weight loss with virtues. It also entails learning to have faith. To overcome the threat of despair, an ever-present haunting shadow in Weight Watchers members’ daily struggles with weight, Weight Watchers learn the feeling rule of faith, which focuses on silencing the voices of doubt. By helping consumers undergo spiritual rebirth and learn to have faith, the Weight Watchers brand heightens the importance its consumers place on weight loss and makes them feel that their environments are conductive to weight loss, both of which are hallmarks of hope (MacInnis and de Mello, 2005).

Spiritual rebirth

Upon joining Weight Watchers, our informants learn to leave their old selves behind, along with any markers of past moral defects. Nora, a 36-year-old member who cannot remember ever not dieting, explains: “ … when I joined, I remember telling the leader, it’s kinda been hopeless for me … she said, ‘you’re here now, you’re gonna be a whole new person once you’ve gone through this, like physically, and mentally.” Such a story underscores the view that the moment of joining the group becomes a moment of spiritual rebirth, a moment fueling “biographical reconstruction” characteristic of religious conversion experiences (Snow and Machalek, 1984). Keara recounts one such story highlighting the conversion process and its moment of spiritual rebirth:

… the neat thing that came out of that meetings was, the leader told us, “if you haven’t gotten rid of all of your quote-unquote fat clothes, you need to get rid of them … it will be a very positive, very humbling experience to get rid of all your quote-unquote fat clothing.” So I went home, and thought about it, and contemplated, and I prayed about it, and I just decided that I’m gonna go through my closet and I’m gonna get rid of all those fat clothes, and I did. … see, my old me would not just do that, but I just kinda blew that off and, keep thinkin’ hey, I’m a new me, I’m a thinner me, no way I’m ever gonna go back to being unhappy fat person. I even joked in the meeting, “I’m a real convert now” (laughs), and everyone was cheering, sayin’ I’m brave … I definitely felt hope, I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

Keara is a 50-year-old business owner halfway to her 50-pound weight-loss goal. She describes a “demonstration event” that provides “dramatic evidence both to oneself and to others that one is imbued with the appropriate spirit or force and is therefore an authentic devotee or convert” (Snow and Machalek, 1984: 172). Rebirth signified by the disposal of her old clothes involves symbolically divesting herself of the old “fat” self that signifies an identity interwoven with despair. By discarding her entire wardrobe, Keara evokes the metaphor of shedding old skin to account for the moment of leaving behind her past, desperate self. She, like other members, learns to feel that such moments ought to be experienced cathartically. As the sign of commitment to change through Weight Watchers, the act of throwing away old clothes enables Keara to feel like she is moving ahead on that journey.

Through spiritual rebirth, Weight Watchers learn to frame their ongoing weight-loss pursuits as meaningful quests for self-improvement. They are encouraged to view dieting as a virtuous, selfless act rather than a narcissistic, vain pursuit of physical beauty. While some members certainly yearn for enhanced physical attractiveness through slimmer physiques, the group meetings attempt to instill the notion that weight loss should be felt as a morally righteous cause, a framing rule explained by Selma:

I’m reminded why I’m here. I’m trying to do somethin’ good, you know … people don’t often understand, like [those] outside Weight Watchers, they think we’re here for vanity, like we only wanna look good, that’s an added bonus of course (laughs), but people, they don’t understand that it’s a sacrifice, like it takes time to toss a beautiful salad as opposed to throwing stuff into microwave, or, it takes time to get to the meeting … what we do here is much bigger, it’s good for us and good for others … that helps with hope.

As a 43-year-old housewife, Selma is on a mission to achieve a 45-pound loss. As Selma is losing weight, she has learned to frame the pursuit of weight loss as a sacrosanct moral duty. Selma has internalized this framing rule partly due to the conviction that she is fighting with the outside world, which is prejudiced against her weight-loss effort. Removal of the framing of weight-loss attempts as superfluous and replacement with a sanctified frame combats the body-reduction politics that frown upon women’s preoccupation with slimming down as a pursuit of vanity (e.g., Rothblum, 1994). The group meetings enable Selma to counter the suspicions of superficiality and to see herself as a moral crusader instead. In this framing, dieting emerges as a devotional offering that brings about societal rectification.

Faith

Becoming a Weight Watcher also entails learning to have faith in the brand’s ability to stimulate weight loss. As a feeling rule, faith defines how they ought to feel about doubts, whether it means being more forgiving, more compassionate, or more patient when it comes to evaluating one’s own and others’ dietary challenges. Having faith is then an antidote to doubt that lingers in the back of our informants’ minds. By adopting the feeling rule of faith, Weight Watchers members learn to feel that whatever obstacles they may directly or indirectly encounter, they should not let setbacks take away from the belief that Weight Watchers will help its members achieve weight loss. Erica describes how the group leader instills the feeling rule of having faith:

… the group leader, she took my height and weight, and I knew I wanted to lose a hundred pounds, but when I heard someone else say, “so, your goal is a hundred pounds,” I felt real bad. I guess I was showing in my face, I even said, like, heck, how can someone lose a hundred pounds … the group leader, she talked to me a bit, she said, “you gotta believe it’s gonna happen” … it’s like faith … like believe, in God even if we don’t see’im, it’s the same … you come here, doubting is worst you can do for yourself. I thought that was a neat comparison … it just felt reassuring, hopeful.

Erica’s account of her first group-meeting experience is telling of the inculcation of feeling rules at Weight Watchers group meetings. By evoking the feeling rule of faith, the group leader evokes the parallel to religious faith, which renders doubts undesirable. They have no space in how Weight Watchers ought to feel. In drawing such a parallel, the group leader uses faith aligned with its theological conception as an antidote to despair (Moltmann, 1967). In lieu of such a feeling rule, she asks Erica to embrace the program, to take a leap of faith rather than calculate the odds of weight loss. Erica feels comfortably reassured by the group leader, who puts her in what she believes to be the “right mindset” for the weight-loss pursuit.

The feeling rule of faith also helps members frame daunting aspects of dieting as tests of one’s faith in the brand. By evoking the notion of dieting as the passage of the faithful, the group leaders’ and the peers’ reassurances that “trials and tribulations” will eventually earn a reward rekindles the notion of righteous suffering. The ongoing discipline of faith is framed as a journey toward eventual reward akin to the believers’ reward of salvation. Enduring dietary tribulations therefore is an inevitable, if not a necessary, part of the weight-loss journey, a point articulated by Agnes:

… at that meeting, one lady spoke up, and she was sayin’ “You can’t beat up on yourself’ cause this is our cross to bear.” She said, “It’s ok to feel down a bit but you can’t beat up on yourself when you mess up,’ cause when you feel bad, that’s when you’re ready to give up” … she said, “Look at it as a test. It’s a test, so if you go through with this, you dealt with your demons.” … so I remember that, and I don’t feel as bad messin’ up … I feel hope.

Through the group meetings, members like Agnes, a 53-year-old Weight Watcher trying to lose 35 pounds, learn the importance of enduring emotional martyrdom defined through perseverance in hardships. In Agnes’ quote, the reference to bearing the cross alludes to the road to Golgotha—on the road to crucifixion, Christ trailed the heavy cross symbolizing human sins. In the same vein, the emotional burden of weight loss feels heavy upon Weight Watchers; it is their cross, and it is permissible to feel occasionally burdened with its heaviness. Weight Watchers are reminded that by tugging their weight-loss crosses, they will conquer emotional “demons.” The fellow Weight Watcher reminds the group that they ought not to “beat up” on themselves after dietary failures. Such failures are within the bounds of emotional trials and tribulations along the weight-loss journey. If anything, the emotional martyrdom reinforces the prospect that upon passing the test, the reward of weight loss now looms larger.

Witnessing: Hope emplacement in the brand through worship

To forge a view of their environments as conducive to goal fulfillment, Weight Watchers need assurances. Through exaltation, religious practices associated with testifying to the cause of heightened emotional energy (Durkheim, 1915/1965), Weight Watchers learn to assign the brand powers capable of protecting them in the unsympathetic world outside the meetings. Through proselytizing, a sacrificial act associated with “divine worship” (Weber, 1993: 26), Weight Watchers convert their environments into goal-conducive ones.

Exaltation of the Weight Watchers brand’s sacred powers

Exaltation entails paying homage to transcendental power through such acts as praying, reading the holy scriptures, or giving thanks for the miraculous presence of the divine in one’s life, acts that also protect against bouts of despair. We find several instances of exaltation in our informants’ accounts. Even group meetings become objects of exaltation. Some members experience the meeting-room space as embodying emotional energy that relieves emotional burdens of a bad diet day or week. Informants evoke the metaphor of “church” when elaborating these emotional effects: “I compare it to going to church. … it gives me peace of mind. … it’s like I feel I’m gonna have a good week” (Francis). In Francis’ quote, the meeting emerges as the site of worship, and just as attending church engenders a calming aura, attending the meeting induces peacefulness. Even the specific décor elements of the meeting space are experienced as adding to the church-like aura related by Francis. For instance, bulletin boards pinned with pre- and post-weight-loss pictures that hang in the meeting room evoke veneration akin to religious artifacts. Notably, one of our data-collection sites at which Weight Watchers meetings were held was a local church.

Exaltation is also evident in how informants treat various articles such as leaflets, brochures, and other Weight Watchers materials accumulated over the course of their membership. During tough times, Weight Watchers feel compelled to reexamine these materials as they might examine religious texts possessing sacred properties. Many members own black faux-leather-bound diaries, which they call “little black books.” These diaries, in which members record daily food intake and exercise, are given to every Weight Watcher upon joining. However, for some informants, these objects possess special powers, as Renee elaborates: “ … thank God for my diary … it’s like my bible, I carry it everywhere … I write everything I eat down, even if I go overboard, and when I write it down, it never lets me stay upset too long.” Renee evokes the metaphor of the Bible. She is inseparable from her diary just as the Bible is an indispensable companion to many believers. However, unlike the Bible, the diary reinforces the vital feeling rule learned at the meetings that members should never feel that obstacles can overwhelm them.

Our informants also exalt other material objects infused with the Weight Watchers’ sacred power. These tokens include key chains in the shape of clapping hands, bookmarks engraved with the number of pounds lost, or smiley-face stickers affixed to the Weight Watchers’ weight-loss diaries. Beyond signifying members’ commitment to the weight-loss pursuit, these tokens are contaminated with the sacred emotional energies of the group meetings that can be unleashed by a simple touch. Interacting with these tokens imparts hope, as Bessie explains: “I tinker with my keychain … kinda like a reminder, to be thankful, for the group and … brings me to the positive world.” Bessie “tinkers” with her keychain like a believer fingers a rosary; it offers praise to the group and upholds her hope.

The emotion work of exaltation is regularly performed outside the meetings as well. Emotional vocabulary (Gordon, 1989), including prayer-like mantras such as “tomorrow is a new day” and “we’re losers but not quitters” are often meaningful tools of exaltation. Such emotional vocabulary is critical for many members who fail to attend the group meetings regularly. They provide Weight Watchers with hope in situations where they need extra energy, such as tempting food situations. Some lifetime members may only manage to meet the group once a month rather than once a week, thereby feeling more vulnerable in dangerous food situations. Consider Isis’ story about a trial at a friend’s wedding, and particularly how the emotional vocabulary enables her to reinstate the feeling rule of hopefulness despite obstacles:

It’s a kinda funny story, like we have this saying that goes “Nothing tastes as good as thin does;” the leader used to repeat that often, I also kinda got hooked on it. Well, after I started maintaining, I was doing pretty good but I didn’t go to meetings for a while. Anyway, I went to a friend’s wedding in a different town, and food-wise it was just horrible … there was all this food … it started with wedding rehearsal, and, then, on wedding day, at the cocktail reception, there was this huge buffet, and … I just went crazy. … I think I blew that week’s points, and, next week’s … I just didn’t feel good … I felt like I was throwing all the hard work away. So what I did, right before the cake, yeah, cake and desserts, I went to the powder room, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Nothing tastes as good as thin does,” “Nothing tastes as good as thin does.” I literally kept saying that to myself, like a prayer (laughs), and thinking, “I’m not gonna feel bad, I did it, it’s over, I can take care of it,” kinda remembering what I accomplished, and it felt much better … I only had like a taste of the wedding cake, and that was it.

Like prayers, the proverbs, as charged containers of emotional energies learned at the group meetings, infuse members with hope. Isis resorts to the aphorism “Nothing tastes as good as thin does” to relieve herself from the possession of the food demon. Like the incantation of special prayers to ward off evil, Isis begins chanting her Weight Watchers “prayer,” which rekindles the feeling rule of faith in the face of dietary lapses: one must refuse to succumb to self-loathing in the aftermath of a downfall. By activating the Weight Watchers’ feeling rule through ritualistic praying, Isis exalts the power of the Weight Watchers group. Her hope is restored, and consequently, she is saved her from bingeing on dessert. Thus, “prayers” allow Weight Watchers to overcome challenging situations, in which despair is always only an arm’s length away.

Proselytizing

Proselytizing, the emotion work category of converting someone else into a believer of the Weight Watchers brand, is another prominent feature of enhancing the individual experience of hope. It pertains to the emotion work involved in spreading the Weight Watchers brand’s message of hope, similar to “evangelizing” (Schau et al., 2009). It is, however, predicated on the feeling rule of hope. When members spread their hope-laden stories of Weight Watchers, they learn to feel that such actions ought to make them feel hopeful. However, rather than representing a mere incident of positive word-of-mouth, proselytizing is ingrained in the normative structure of Weight Watchers. Over the course of being socialized into being a Weight Watcher, members learn to view proselytizing as an internalized duty to save others:

I’m a witness that it [weight loss] can be done. I can see that my co-workers, they are now more conscious too, they ask me questions, so I talk to them … it might catch on … maybe someone will go to Weight Watchers … the whole society may become better, and … instead of sayin’ “I’m sick, I’m gonna die” … some people might actually be saved from that.

Bonnie is a witness to the power of Weight Watchers. Through her own emotion work, she sets the example to her own co-workers to abstain from tempting office foods such as cookies, a moral action she feels reinforces her own hope. As the co-workers follow suit and make inquiries, Bonnie discusses Weight Watchers with her colleagues, akin to the practice known as “witnessing” in the religious vernacular. Bonnie views her co-workers’ change as an instance of the betterment of the world, leading to the potential salvation of many others, a favorable influence that might “catch on.”

Group meetings play a role in perpetuating the practice of proselytizing as an integral aspect of emotion culture at Weight Watchers. The possibility of converting someone else verifies that members believe that Weight Watchers possesses the key to weight loss. Through the ritualistic sharing of firsthand experiences, the meetings impart to the members the notion that every Weight Watcher can make a difference and create positive change in someone else’s life. Thus the members come to view themselves as active agents of proselytizing, a framing demonstrated by one of the group-meeting observations:

The leader addresses the audience by saying that they have five new members who joined that day. The leader signals to a young woman in the middle row. Turning to the group, the young woman stands up and says that this is very emotional for her; she is here because of her friend and points to the lady sitting next to her. She says that her friend lost a ton of weight, and talked about Weight Watchers. The young woman was reluctant in the beginning, but seeing how her friend has changed—she states no one in the office can bring in treats anymore, which causes a roar of laughter among the audience—she is here today, hoping the same will happen to her. Her voice becomes softer, and some of the members start clapping and cheering. The young woman sits down, looking flushed, and the group leader takes the floor, saying that this is another example of how the Weight Watchers have positive influence outside this room: they can all be someone’s personal saviors. (Group meeting observation, site #1)

The above episode reveals how new converts are publicly welcomed into the fold and asked to engage in the emotion work of testifying. However, as the new member testifies, the group leader reframes the new member’s experiences and the overall narrative as one highlighting the moral imperative of proselytizing. In line with the proselytizing notion, non-Weight Watchers are cast as spiritual outsiders (Bibby and Brinkerhoff, 1974) who need to be saved, and everyone in Weight Watchers can become someone else’s personal savior. Through such a framing, Weight Watchers can experience proselytizing as affirmation of their own hopes. At the same time, the practice of proselytizing ensures the succession of the group membership, allowing everyone to become a potential “poster child.” In so doing, Weight Watchers transform the social world outside meetings into one congruent with their own. The world outside the meetings becomes an extension of the hope-laden emotion culture found at Weight Watchers.

Discussion

This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationships among brands, consumer collectivities, and emotions. We offer a theoretical framework developed in the North American cultural context to understand the pattern discussed in the literature—namely, that brand collectivities cultivate brand-centric emotions (cf. Muñiz and Schau, 2005; Schau et al., 2009). Previous consumer culture-theoretic scholarship has suggested that collectivities facilitate brand-centric “emotional engagements” (Schau et al., 2009: 47), “shared emotions” (Cova and Pace, 2006: 1099), or “sentiments” (Muñiz and Schau, 2005: 739). These studies, though, offer little insight into the underlying collective processes through which brand-centric emotions are cultivated. Our research finds that brand-centric emotions are results of interactions between a brand, its consumers, and emotion culture. Our findings, circumscribed by the North American cultural milieu, show that cultivating hope entails a dramaturgical process in which emotion culture, infused with religious vernacular, guides brand-centric emotional experience. Weight Watchers consumers are steered by its emotion culture with religious undertones. This emotion culture facilitates expression and experience of hope through feeling rules, framing rules, and emotion work.

Our framework of hope cultivation suggests that consumer culture theory-oriented researchers have largely overlooked how emotions operate in consumption. Perhaps due to the view of emotions as individual, intra-psychic phenomena (Bagozzi et al., 1999), sociologically and anthropologically inspired consumer culture scholarship has not focused on the study of discrete emotions (Beruchashvili and Moisio, 2013). For instance, the experiences surrounding goal-oriented pursuits such as exercising, getting a plastic surgery, or perhaps involvement in most hobbies are all deeply entrenched in emotions. It would be difficult to deny the reality that emotions during such pursuits are likely to emerge in relation to collective processes. Our research proffers an opportunity to further examine emotion expression, emotion display, and even emotion suppression during such pursuits through a dramaturgical perspective.

Our research also informs the nascent theory on hope in consumption (MacInnis and de Mello, 2005). Our study responds to the call for research into the cultural and social conceptualizations of emotions (Bagozzi et al., 1999), as we emphasize the collective antecedents of hope in the context of the Weight Watchers brand. The findings reveal that the appraisals involved in experiencing hope, highlighted by prior cognitively oriented theory, have inherently cultural origins in religious vernacular and collective processes (cf. Lazarus, 1999). While prior research points to the individual origin of hope, our research demonstrates uniquely that religious vernacular permeates hope-cultivation processes that guide individuals’ intra-cognitive, appraisal processes. Theorizing developed in this paper therefore suggests that ideational resources such as religious vernacular alter appraisals that evoke the feeling of hope. Religious notions also underlie a body of reinforcing feeling and framing rules that preserve hope over time. While consumer culture supplies brand context, religion furnishes cultural structure and language for the experience of hope. It is our hope that future research further examines how ideational resources marshal hope cultivation in consumer culture.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially funded by the Department of Marketing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA.

Author Biographies

Mariam Beruchashvili is Associate Professor of Marketing at California State University, Northridge, USA. Her research focuses on social construction of emotion, overweight identity, and consumer goals.

Risto Moisio is Associate Professor of Marketing at California State University, Long Beach, USA. His research examines pro-social behavior, gender identity, and consumer well-being.

James W. Gentry is Graduate Chair and Maurice J. and Alice Holman College Professor of Marketing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA. His research interests include consumer life-event transitions, cross-cultural differences in consumer decision processes, consumer acculturation, and family decision-making.

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