This dissertation shows a number of important findings that contribute to filling the gaps we identified in the stigma literature. First, it seeks to develop further understanding of the stigma concept, which has been understudied in consumer research. Second, it aims at looking at the concept from a communal perspective. This stance has been overlooked overall in the stigma literature, since most of the research has only investigated the individual
perspective. Third, this research focuses on understanding how consumption communities contribute to distancing women from their overweight stigma.
We first offer a framework that allows to understand the stigma experience of overweight women and its relationship with consumption. We draw from the literature to identify how the stigma experience happens in terms of stereotype experience. We also use the literature to identify that women experience three occurrences of stigma. We find that overweight women experience these stereotypes due to the direct stigma from their environment. First, they have to suffer many explicit comments from their surroundings.
Second, integrating these stereotypes increases their feelings of self-stigma. Here, they
internalize the stereotypes held against them, which makes them act towards confirming these stereotypes. Third, they have to endure a threatening environment that is filled with
environmental and or structural stigma. In this section we demonstrate how institutions such as the fashion industry, the media or the healthcare industry contribute to perpetuating prejudice against overweight women. In this section we also examine the interaction with these stigma experiences and consumption. Here, we contribute to the literature by identifying the poor outcomes that overweight stigma induces (failure, poor performance, anticipation of failure) and how they can lead to reactions of avoidance, withdrawal and disidentification.
We also contribute to the literature by documenting the negative reactions and outcomes that stem from the interaction between overweight stigma and consumption such as fashion, food and healthcare.
Second, we draw on some of the concepts from stigma management discussed in the literature review to reveal how the community supports the transition of the consumer from negative to positive coping. This transition is critical for consumer research. It provides an understanding of consumers’ approach to the market; and their change of reaction from being
avoidant to engaged. In the first results section, we describe how the heavily stigmatized consumer manages the stress caused by market encounters through distancing themselves from the market. In the second results section, we show how joining a consumption
community helps consumers transition into perceiving the marketplace as an opportunity, and hence seeking consumption. Here, we shed light on a new relationship between a subculture of consumption, and the market that has not been identified before. The little research on stigmatized communities establishes these collectives, either as sites for building distance from the market, or as change agents that seek to alter the market. Our research uncovers a situation where the community supports the market, and covers for its flaws (structural stigma and consumer marginalization). It encourages its members to explore once again the market after they have distanced themselves from it.
Third, we look at our data to uncover the processes that move the participants from perceiving the market as a threat to seeing it as an opportunity. Here, we uncover nine
practices that support the consumer in their change of evaluation and in moving from negative to positive coping strategies. In our results sections, we explain how these practices operate this transition through reversing the stigma process. We show how they counter the stigma inducing elements identified previously within our literature review. We find that the VLR community supports its members in reversing processes of labeling, stereotyping, isolation and disempowerment. Hence, the practices we identify operate at two levels. They operate at the psychological and social level by offering avenues for destigmatisation for overweight women. They also interfere with their relationship with the marketplace by encouraging them to approach stigma relevant consumption domains such as fashion, healthcare, leisure and eating.
Finally, we offer Figure 6 as an overall model that reflects the interplays we have uncovered between the market, the community and Stigma. This figure also illustrates our findings in terms of the three levels of operation of stigma that we have previously discussed in the literature review (Pescosolido et al., 2008) . Our model identifies the elements of the stigma experience and how the community operates to alleviate stigma at the Micro, Macro and Meso levels. We reveal how experiencing stigma related stereotypes, and the structural stigma stemming from the market leads to evaluating the market encounter as threatening. We also uncover how the market’s structure coupled with the poor stigma related outcomes feed into this threat evaluation. In Figure 6 we show the elements that push the stigmatized out of
the Market. Micro level forces contribute to enhancing this exclusion through withdrawal and avoidance. This happens when the stigmatized integrates market stereotypes and starts
performing poorly and anticipating failure.
Also, figure 6 shows how community membership makes the stigmatized approach the market and destigmatise. It illustrates how the community encompasses market engagement practices that operate at the Market, communal and individual level. At the Market level, engagement happens by positioning the market as inclusive. At the communal level,
establishing communal superiority empowers people and alleviates their feeling of exclusion.
At the individual level, practices of accepting the rejected self, help the individual destigmatize and feel more empowered.
Figure 6: Summary of the interplay of Stigma, The Market and the Community.
It is important to note that the online context plays a critical role in our results. Many of our findings directly relate to the virtual context and would not have been identified by looking at a face-to-face community. The online context is a major destigmatisation agent.
For example, Elsa and Jordan Bone two wheelchaired makeup artists have used YouTube videos to fight the stereotypical labels associated with their disability. They have been able to bring awareness about their disability but also get support from their online fans. First, as discussed previously, the Internet has created unique opportunities for overweight consumers to join with similar others around projects other than weight loss. Communities such as VLR constitute a unique opportunity to engage in discourses that are not in line with the dominant discourses within the environment. This contributes to countering the isolation created by the social separation of the stigmatized. Our data shows many accounts of consumers explaining how VLR has helped get them out of their isolation. Also, the online community allows for control of information disclosure and provides the possibility of remaining anonymous. This encourages members to vent their negative feelings and to engage in countercultural
discussions. These constitute the basis of destigmatisation as they open the door for
stereotype rejection and reversing the negative labeling, as discussed in our results section.
Many of the members explain how they share information with the community that they do not disclose to their close family members. VLR creates an environment where dominant norms can be challenged without experiencing identity related social consequences. It allows the stigmatized to enter discussions where they overcome their powerlessness. In addition, the online context allows for a transfer of supportive resources beyond social support. Online social media, have indeed become key to educating people and fostering knowledge transfer.
VLR acts as a resource center for overweight consumers to acquire knowledge and a stigma relevant expertise on how to pursue their countercultural consumption preferences. In this regard, VLR can be assimilated to a community of practice (Wenger, 2011). It acts as a social learning system (Wenger, 2000) where consumers learn together how to better manage their stigma of being overweight and to achieve self-acceptance. The result is improved
performance for the members as they are able to develop their expertise. VLR supports its members to develop a shared competence regarding overweight consumption. In our results sections we discuss how community interaction allowed many participants to become highly knowledgeable, for example, about body size and which garments better fit their bodies.
Many of them explain having been able to leverage the community’s expertise and to become highly competent in being fashionable.
While VLR is a natural community that revolves around a social objective, it is yet used as a commercial tool. Its creators instrumentalize it to generate income (P.-J. Benghozi, 2006). It is build around an economic model based on authorizing and supporting several forms of advertising. First, the community’s page is full of banner advertising that sometimes even pertains to weight loss products. Also, the VLR’s newsletter comprises information about new product launches of some brands. It helps diffuse coupon reductions and
announces new store openings. The community owner benefits from her status and is invited by several overweight related brands’ fashion shows.
I) CONTRIBUTION
In what follows, we will unfold our major findings and provide a thorough discussion of the contribution of this work. We will also clarify the research limits of this project, and suggest some avenues for future research.
1) Consumption Communities
This work extends the literature in consumer research that discusses the transformative role of stigmatized communities. In their research on Harley Davidson bikers, Schouten and McAlexander (1995) explain how bikers go through the process of self transformation. This makes them gradually acquire the “biker” identity. A similar view is provided by Kozinet’s (2001) research on Star Treck fans. He explains that community involvement leads to a progressive display of the negative stereotypes associated with Star Treck. In both these papers, acquiring this stigmatized identity is a main driver for community membership. They proudly display stigma related objects as a sign of belonging to a stigmatized group. Hence, in reference to Goffman’s (1963) work, we can infer that this transformation moves them from a less stigmatized identity (discreditable); to a more stigmatized one (discredited).
Our research not only broadens this theory on transformation, but also provides a counter view. In contrast to the above-mentioned research, our findings demonstrate that stigmatized communities can also be agents of transformation that move the consumer away from stigma and closer to the “normals”. This happens in relation to transformation pertaining to their identity projects. Our findings infer that stigma acts as a blocker to these consumer’s identity projects and makes them associate with negative identities that are stigma related. For example, our results discuss how these consumers first associated with being “ugly,”
“unattractive,” “unfashionable,” and “not normal”. This however changes as they participate in VLR. For example, many of our members discuss their transformation towards becoming more ‘feminine,’ ‘fashionable,’ ‘competent,’ or ‘attractive’. We show that the community helps the transformation from identities that fulfill the stigmatized identity, to getting away