Eureka! Institutional Repository

While many research has focus on the reasons for low self-esteem and a wide range of self-help books have been written teaching individuals how to increase self-esteem, an understanding on how individuals may lose their identity and how identities can be regained remains in the dark. This paper seeks to advance our understanding on how low self-identity and low self-esteem individuals are able to rebuild and regain their identity and self-esteem through anime consumption. Qualitative interviews with eighteen informants were conducted. Findings from the study suggest that individuals have low self-identities and low self-esteems due to non-conformance to societal standards and expectations. Through open coding, individuals with low self-identity and low self-esteem were found to go through five stages in the rebuilding and regaining their identities, namely awareness, exploratory, evaluation, immersion, and confirmation. Through axial coding, eight themes were identified occurring along the process, namely social pressure, search, escapism, dominance, materialism, confidence, comfort and tribal/community. Theoretical implications, marketing implications, and future research directions from the findings are also presented.