History Of Weight Watchers

Weight loss is a $40 billion dollar industry in the United States today (www.abc.news.com). In With the growing concerns about obesity in the United States, the desire and need to lose those extra 20 pounds is more desperate than ever. In this task, many diets, pills and even surgeries have been conducted today. Not just for health reasons but for that desire to have the perfect body. This desire is being felt by both male and females. With the many weight control programs on the market today, Jenny Craig, Inc. has grown into one of the largest weight management companies in the world.

1. Weight Watchers. This diet received 3.8 out of 5 stars from the panel of experts for weight loss. Weight Watchers' claim is that you can drop up to two pounds a week using their PointsPlus program and group support. This isn't about counting calories; the key to losing pounds on this diet is choosing nutritionally dense foods that have a healthy ratio of fiber, fat, protein and carbohydrates. Fresh fruits and vegetables are highly encouraged and carry zero points, so people can eat their fill of these foods. Candy bars and processed foods are higher in points and allowed in smaller portions. Experts like this diet's effectiveness over the long term. In an analysis of more than 600 Weight Watchers participants, researchers found that nearly 60 percent stayed within 5 pounds of their goal weight one year after completing the program, according to a study published in the British

Weight Watchers is identified as the number one weight loss solution method by all consumers within one year of partnership.

Obesity is one of the most rapidly growing health epidemics in the United States and affects more than 60 million people. Despite recent efforts to understand and treat obesity, there has been little success in reversing the rising trend. There is convincing evidence that obesity is directly related to many health risks. As a matter of fact, morbidly obese people are at a high risk for weight related illnesses, such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease. However, research confirms that long-term weight loss success can help to significantly reduce these weight related health risks (Brethauer).

Weight Watchers is an excellent program to aid in weight loss and healthy eating. It is an easy, healthy, and effective method for losing weight and eating correctly. Weight Watchers has based their program on a point system, making it easy to follow by counting points assigned to foods. It promotes healthy eating habits by regulating serving sizes, which are set by the United States Department of Agriculture. In addition to promoting healthy eating habits, it offers support for people who might need it. The support, along with the eating plan, helps dieters lose weight and eat healthy.

Jenny Craig has been around since the 80’s. The weight management program caters to adolescence, women, men, people with diabetes and seniors. The program combines nutrition and physical activity with counseling to assist consumers to change their lifestyles and eating habits. The main goal is to have the client reach their desired weight, once reached; they will not have to rely on Jenny Craig’s packaged food, planned menus, or consultations to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Jenny Craig offers multiple selections on their prepackaged meal plans. On www.jennycraig.com , you may view their menu selection and choose which items you would like to bring home for the week. The program is easy to follow

In today’s growing world, fad diets seem to be all the rage. As obesity rates are increasing more and more each year with 1/3 of the population overweight and 1/3 of the population obese, many people are trying everything that they can to lose weight. With people in our nation because too busy to exercise, too busy to make healthy meals, and healthy foods being too expensive, many people turn to these fad diets to help control their weight or help them lose their weight. One of the most known fad diet is the Weight Watchers program. The purpose of this study is to find out using both creditable and not so creditable sources if this fad diet actually works.

No one is happy with their body; there is always something that they would like to tone up or slim down. Americans spend billions of dollars a year on weight loss programs, not to mention the food that these programs require you to eat. With most of these diets, one cannot continue on with them because the diet just would not be healthy to do so. It would be amazing for a diet to let you eat things you eat now, but still lose weight; to be able to go out and enjoy dinner with family and friends without fearing a diet choice that has already been made. Well, Weight Watchers lets a person do all this and so much more.

Dating even before Biblical times people realized that periodic and prolonged fasting was beneficial for epileptics. Little was known about why or how, but prolonged fasting could last up to 2 or 3 weeks. For some it involved clear broth diets and others abstained from everything but water (Key). It wasn’t until 1921 at the American Medical Association convention in Boston that endocrinologist (bordering on quacksalver) H. Rawle Geyelin from New York Presbyterian reported that a period of 20 day fasting had miraculously curative effect on epileptic patients (Wheless). Though the report was exciting, it was primarily anecdotal and offered no scientific explanation for how the fasting worked to stop seizures. Furthermore, therapeutic starvation wasn’t a sustainable treatment option for many epileptics, particularly for children. In 1924 Dr. Russell Wilder of the Mayo Clinic crafted a diet plan that mimicked the body’s response to fasting. What exactly is the body’s response to starvation? The body exhausts glycogen stores and begins metabolizing stored fat to create energy and power brain, and other organ activity.

Weight Watchers has been around for almost fifty years and has seen some success in helping people lose weight. The need to revamp their entire program does show signs that perhaps this program was not showing the ability to keep participants maintaining the weight loss on the long-term scale as that they promise. A complete Weight Watchers Points Plus review shows that the program does show some great improvement from their older version.

Identify market structure Weight Watchers is a company that has been around for the last 50 years and has been developing their brand of giving out weight loss services and products that make them a leading weight management service all over the world. Weight Watchers, without a doubt the largest single player in the highly disjointed industry has over 45 years of industry experience and like many of its competitors, is constantly changing its core program so as to become more useable to and petition to a lot of its members. Since November 2010, it appears that the company has been able to hit a marketing sweet spot that will lead them to a long term period of profitability that will keep rising. Weight Watchers Food Co. is revising their trade marketing structure to a big test this year with the start of their new strategy which involved the "Points Plus program," marketing plan (Denos, 2009). This will be part of their first major trade and consumer advertising. This is something to take advantage of especially since people are in the diet season. The company is reorganizing in order to set parallel roles for consumer and trade promotions managers and likewise bringing down the wall that divides marketing and sales. The change in this marketing strategy is the first key step in a procedure aimed at re-generating the company's sales

Walgreens was founded in 1901 measuring 50 feet by 20 feet by Charles R. Walgreen, Sr.. Mr. Walgreen was born near Galesburg, Illinois and his family later relocated to Dixon, Illinois at town about 60 miles north of his birthplace. Mr. Walgreens’ father was a farmer who turned into a businessperson and saw a great potential of the Rock River Valley (Walgreen, n.d., p.1). At age 16, Charles Walgreen had his first experience working in a drug store. He didn’t always have pleasurable experiences but it was a job with pay. He had an accident at a shoe factory that cut off his left middle finger from the top joint. This injury also stops him from playing any sports at school. After a year and a half with the

Weight Watchers International, Inc. was founded in 1961 by Jean Nidetch, who had found herself constantly on a diet but never losing any weight. Knowing she needed more she attended a diet seminar. Ms. Nidetch lost 20 pounds after the seminar, but soon found her motivation dwindling. She invited some friends over who sympathized with her battle of the bulge and they began to share with the group their struggles with food. The group of women began to lose weight and within a short time Nidetch was hosting more than 40 people in her apartment for these support group meetings.

Weight Watchers has faced a number of issues in the past several years, many of which are highlighted in the case study for this assignment. The company was able to reach a financial high point earlier this decade in 2011 when it recorded a record breaking 1.8 billion in revenues. However, the company’s finances have slowly dwindled ever since then, culminating in losses for seven straight quarters and low stock prices at the beginning of 2015. The core of the problems it was facing were relatively straightforward. The weight loss industry was changing, and Weight Watchers was having difficult changing along with it. Specifically, the company had troubles modernizing its business model to account for the digital age as represented by increasing online options for weight loss. This fact was compounded by the reality that there was greater competition, including that from organizations whose primary business was to capitalize on digital technology to attract customers. Technologies such as mobile devices, mobile applications, cloud computing, and social media had made considerable strides in the way that people were monitoring and attempting to lose weight. Weight Watchers, however, had had only marginal success using these technologies, and faced the undesirable situation in which its methods were becoming rapidly outdated.

This means that Heinz is not willing to invest in any other type of market, no matter how promising the rewards. Cutting the Weight Watcher's segment as part of this commitment may have been a bad mistake as the trend of losing weight is becoming more popular everyday. Their international operations make them susceptible to the strengthening U.S. dollar.