Nobody Joins a Gym: Identity Signaling in Fitness Marketing
In 2024, a snaggle-toothed toy called Labubu sold for $170,000 at auction. It has no function. You can’t wear it. It doesn’t do anything. It just sits there, looking like something you’d find behind a radiator.
And yet it outsold Chanel handbags on the resale market.
Meanwhile, the fitness industry keeps asking the same question it’s been asking since the invention of the treadmill: why do people sign up for gyms they never attend? The answer might be the same reason they queued overnight for a plastic gremlin. Understanding identity signaling in fitness marketing changes how you think about what you’re actually selling.
| People don’t buy products for what they do. They buy them for what owning them says about who they are. A 2025 Harvard study on the Labubu toy craze found that symbolic consumption and identity signaling drove a culturally meaningless object to a $670 million market in six months. Gyms sell the same thing: not fitness, but the identity of someone who exercises. |
The $670 Million Gremlin
Pahul Sachdeva’s 2025 research paper out of Harvard Business School didn’t set out to explain your gym’s January problem. It set out to explain how a culturally ambiguous object with no utility, no heritage, and frankly no business being worth more than a fiver became a global consumer phenomenon worth hundreds of millions.
Labubu is a collectible figurine. It began as niche art in 2015, made by a Hong Kong illustrator. For years it sat in the obscure corner of the designer toy world, known only to a small community of collectors. Then in April 2024, Lisa from BLACKPINK posted an Instagram story cuddling one. Within months, Pop Mart (the manufacturer) reported a 400% surge in net profit. Revenue from Labubu’s product line hit ¥4.81 billion. That’s roughly $670 million. In six months. From a toy.
Sachdeva’s framework traces three stages of what he calls viral market formation: interpretive ambiguity, social validation, and market consolidation. The first stage is the one that matters most here.
| Identity Signaling |
| The use of purchased goods, behaviours, or affiliations to communicate something about yourself to others. Not what the product does, but what owning it says. A Rolex doesn’t tell better time than a Casio. It tells a different story about the person wearing it. |
You Are What You Carry
Russell Belk’s foundational 1988 research on the extended self established something that sounds obvious until you really sit with it: people treat their possessions as literal extensions of their identity. We are what we have. Not metaphorically. Psychologically.
Bourdieu took this further. What you consume, display, and associate with functions as a marker of social distinction. Your taste isn’t personal. It’s positional. Every purchase places you somewhere in a social hierarchy, whether you intend it to or not.
This is where Labubu gets interesting. The toy had no pre-existing symbolism. It wasn’t luxury. It wasn’t heritage. It was, in Sachdeva’s words, a “cultural blank slate.” Early adopters didn’t buy Labubu because of what it meant. They bought it and then collectively decided what it meant. They clipped it to handbags. Dressed it in tiny outfits. Filmed unboxing videos with genuine emotional reactions to pulling the right one from a blind box. Through thousands of these micro-interactions, Labubu stopped being a figurine and became a signal: I’m in on this. I’m part of this. I belong here.
| Symbolic Consumption |
| Purchasing and displaying goods primarily for their social meaning rather than their functional utility. The value lies not in what the object does, but in what it communicates about the owner’s identity, status, or group membership. |
The Gym Nobody Uses
Somewhere in your suburb, there’s a gym membership card sitting in a wallet. It hasn’t been scanned since March. The owner still pays $59.95 a fortnight. They have no immediate plans to cancel.
Traditional marketing would call this a retention win. Behavioural science calls it something else.
That membership isn’t buying access to equipment. It’s buying the identity of someone who exercises. The card in the wallet, the branded water bottle on the desk at work, the occasional Instagram story from the car park at 6am. These aren’t evidence of fitness. They’re acts of identity signaling.
Sachdeva’s research found that Labubu buyers weren’t purchasing a toy. They were purchasing participation in a cultural moment. The object was secondary to what displaying it communicated. A toy historian quoted in the study observed that showing off Labubu signals membership in a group that considers itself fashionable and forward-thinking.
Swap “Labubu” for “F45” or “CrossFit” or “Barry’s” and the mechanism is identical. The branded tank top worn to brunch. The workout screenshot shared to stories. The casual mention of a 5am class in conversation. These are not accidental. They are identity broadcasts. The member is telling the world who they are, using your brand as the transmitter.
When the Signal Breaks
There’s a danger in understanding this too well.
Sachdeva’s framework documents a third stage where the cultural labour of consumers gets absorbed by the commercial machine. Pop Mart saw people treating Labubu as a fashion accessory, so they produced keychain variants and fashion brand collaborations. They saw collectors chasing rare editions, so they manufactured scarcity. The organic meaning that fans had built was quietly monetised.
By early 2026, reports emerged of Labubu’s resale market cooling. The hype cycle was showing cracks. When the commercial exploitation becomes too visible, the signal loses its power. Nobody wants to broadcast an identity that feels manufactured.
Fitness has its own version of this. The gym that plasters “TRIBE” across everything without building an actual community. The coach who engineers social media moments that feel performative rather than genuine. The challenge that’s designed to generate content rather than outcomes. Members can feel the difference between a brand that facilitates identity expression and one that tries to script it.
Sachdeva’s research is clear on this point: the most powerful identity signals emerge from participatory meaning-making. The community decides what the brand stands for. When the company tries to dictate that meaning from the top down, the signal weakens.
Research Summary
| Concept | Mechanism | Fitness Parallel |
| Identity Signaling | Consumers display products to broadcast group membership and self-concept | Members use gym branding, workout posts, and gear as identity markers |
| Symbolic Consumption | Products valued for social meaning over functional utility | Memberships retained for identity value even when attendance drops |
| Participatory Meaning-Making | Consumers collectively create what a brand symbolises through shared rituals | Gym culture built by members (nicknames, traditions, inside jokes) retains better than top-down branding |
| Interpretive Ambiguity | Loosely defined brands invite consumers to project their own meaning | Gyms with flexible identity attract diverse members who each find personal relevance |
The Question
If the most powerful consumer signals are the ones people create for themselves, what happens when you stop telling members what your gym means and start letting them show you?
People Also Ask
What is identity signaling in fitness marketing?
Identity signaling in fitness marketing is when consumers use gym memberships, branded gear, workout content, or fitness affiliations to communicate something about who they are to others. The product’s functional value (access to equipment) becomes secondary to its symbolic value (broadcasting a fit, disciplined, or community-oriented identity).
How does symbolic consumption affect gym member retention?
Members who tie their identity to a gym brand are significantly harder to lose, even when attendance drops. The membership itself becomes part of their self-concept. Cancelling doesn’t just save money. It feels like giving up a piece of who they are. Research on the extended self (Belk, 1988) suggests possessions and affiliations become psychologically integrated into a person’s identity over time.
Can a gym create identity signaling artificially?
With caution. Sachdeva’s research on Labubu found that the strongest identity signals were organically created by consumers, not prescribed by the brand. Gyms that provide the conditions for identity expression (community rituals, shareable moments, visible progress milestones) tend to generate more authentic signaling than those that script it. Forced authenticity is still the most common oxymoron in fitness marketing.
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A plastic toy with fangs taught half a billion dollars’ worth of consumers something the fitness industry still hasn’t fully reckoned with. People don’t buy what you sell. They buy who it lets them become.
References
4. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed.). Free Press.
7. Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. HarperCollins.
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I’m always keen to discuss how these psychological principles play out in the real world. If you have any thoughts or want to chat about your own marketing challenges, feel free to get in touch.
ray.smith@fitnessisbs.com
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