Merchants of Hope: Enhancing Hope Through Brand Community

While recent consumer research on emotions has surfaced to examine the construct of hope, little attention has been devoted to the processes through which consumers enhance hope. This research contributes to consumer research on hope by examining how hope is enhanced over time in a brand community. Our findings show that brand community membership allows consumers to build hope by developing agency and pathway thoughts. We also show how hope-building process varies as a function of lay theories consumers hold about their abilities.