This bachelor thesis explores a virtual try-on interface in the context of the fashion product category. It is argued that virtual representations of product offerings can stimulate consumers’ purchase intentions, and thus, enact an online transaction. The purpose is to investigate how market-based AR/VR influences the behavior of consumers along the customer journey. A qualitative research approach was undertaken to answer the exploratory question. The context of the empirical bachelor thesis is the virtual try-on Synsam Style Lab where two qualitative research methods were conducted. These methods consisted of a document study on Synsam Style Lab and three synchronous online focus group interviews that laid the foundation of the thematic analysis. The purpose of conducting these qualitative research methods was to shed light on whether or not Synsam Style Lab could facilitate consumers’ online buying decision process. Consumers who saw convenience in Synsam Style Lab often expressed reasons related to the theme Alleviate. On the contrary, if consumers interaction with Synsam’s virtual try-on yielded negative experience, then their reasons were often in connection with the theme Insufficiency.  The context of this bachelor thesis is restricted to the fashion eyewear segment and does not represent the total fashion industry. Only members of Generation Y, also known as millennials, participated in the synchronous online focus group interviews. Therefore, incorporating the perspectives of other demographics could contribute to a diversified discovery of findings. Previous research has not explicitly investigated the influence of AR/VR applications on consumers’ engagement in a fashion retail setting. Hence, this bachelor thesis provides new dimensions within the field of market-based AR/VR applications.

This Diploma work deals with the creation of the new fashion brand with the wiew of development and diversification of business activities of the company RKM brokers s.r.o. The main current activities of the company RKM brokers s.r.o. are real estate business and development. This work includes description of the company, analyse of the fashion industry, marketing analyse of the new brand and financial plan for the first year of existence.

Hållbarhet och CSR blir viktigare för företag över hela världen. Syftet med denna studie är att se hur tre stora mode- och accessoarföretag i Sverige kommunicerar CSR på sina hemsidor. De studerade företagen är Nelly, Daniel Wellington och NA-KD. Denna studie har en retorisk utgångspunkt och bygger på teorin om triple bottom line. När det gäller den retoriska metoden var resultaten förhållandevis lika. Företagen fokuserade på argument baserade på logos och ethos, medan argument baserade på patos var ovanligt. Resultatet visar också att samtliga studerade företag kommunicerar CSR baserat på teorin om triple bottom line, men på olika sätt. / Sustainability and CSR are becoming more important for companies all over the world. The aim of this study is to see how three big fashion and accessory companies in Sweden communicate CSR on their websites. The studied companies are Nelly, Daniel Wellington and NA-KD. This study takes a rhetorical approach and is based on the theory of triple bottom line. Regarding the rhetorical approach, the results quite similar. The companies focused on arguments based on logos and ethos arguments, while arguments based on pathos were uncommon. The outcome also shows that all studied companies communicate CSR based on the theory of triple bottom line, but in different ways.

The purpose of this study was to increase the understanding of how the Swedish fast fashion company NA-KD expressed its profile and how it could be linked to sustainability. The fashion industry is known for having big sustainability problems, and that is why the main focus of this study was the paradox between fast fashion and sustainability due to its conflict nature. To concretise the aim of the study, we formulated two questions: “What discourses can be found in NA-KD’s external communication?” and “What profile does the company express through their website?”. To analyse the company’s website we included relevant theories about the individualised consumer society, sustainable consumption and marketing communication. The used method for this study was Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, which was a useful method to enable a critical perspective. Fairclough’s approach made it possible to examine how, and in what way, NA-KD expressed their external communication. The material consisted of ten texts found on the company’s website that were analysed closely and resulted in a number of findings. We found three discourses: the business discourse, the consumer discourse and the sustainability discourse. Those helped us to increase the understanding of the company’s profile, since we discovered a range of different tendencies. The main ones were that NA-KD constructed truth, encouraged more consumption, built relations with the consumer and expressed values and responsibility about sustainability. With those in mind, we concluded that it is doubtful that NA-KD’s sustainability communication is completely honest. They encouraged the consumer to buy more fast fashion clothing, which affects the environment negatively, at the same time as they communicated consciousness about the fashion industry’s impact on the environment. We also found that the communication was contradictory and misleading, hence that some information about their sustainability work does not comply with what is presented. Our main conclusion is therefore that NA-KD’s profile is ambiguous and difficult to establish.

Background: The slow fashion industry arose as a contraposition to the unsustainable ways of fast fashion, and emphasizes attentive consumption and production. It is characterized by four characteristics - transparency, quality, localism and exclusivity – each described with valuable traits in previous studies. However, current marketing efforts of slow fashion are focused only on two transparency aspects; sustainability and ethics, although previous studies show that these have no influence on consumers consumption choices. Therefore, this study aims to explore which aspects within these four characteristics that are perceived as valuable by consumers, so that a value package model for the consumer perceived valuable aspects of slow fashion can be developed. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to develop a new value package model that presents the consumer perceived valuable aspects of slow fashion. Methodology: This exploratory qualitative study was conducted through nine semi-structured interviews with Swedish fashion consumers between the age of 18-26. The participants were selected through convenience sampling, and the interviews resulted in 91 pages of collected data. The data was then analyzed with the help of thematic coding. The findings derived from the study was then used to develop a new value package model; presenting the consumer perceived valuable aspects of slow fashion. Findings: There were six consumer perceived value aspects of slow fashion. These were, in order of highest influence to lowest; classical style, product personality, durability, limited production, security and knowledge. Conclusion: This study contributes with the theoretical implication of a new proposed value package model that displays the customer perceived value aspects of slow fashion. In addition, it provides managerial implications that may help marketers and companies to streamline their marketing efforts of slow fashion.

The fast fashion industry has a large negative impact on the environment and its workers. Consumers purchasing fast fashion are reinforcing the dominant social paradigm, the assumption that humans are superior and the Earth’s resources unlimited. Even though customers are reconsidering their fashion consumer behavior, they often fall back to making unsustainable choices. Research has shown that communication strengthens ethical consumption and supports reducing the attitude-behavior gap. This study proposes that sustainable communication encourages fashion customers to reason with themselves in a way their behavior evolves to be more sustainable. The aim is to investigate customers’ reception and interaction with sustainable communication using the example of the ethical fashion brand Nudie Jeans. Based on the theories of the attitude-behavior gap and sustainable communication, semi-structured in-depth interviews with Nudie Jeans customers were conducted. The analysis of the interview responses demonstrates the initial presence of an attitude-behavior gap and low awareness of sustainable communication among customers. The research indicates that after customers have developed an awareness of sustainable concerns in the fashion industry, a fashion brand can succeed in encouraging customers to adjust predominant consumption patterns towards more ethical ones. On this basis, it is recommended that ethical fashion brands continuously use transparent sustainable communication to educate consumers about the environmental and social maladministration in the fashion industry.

Nowadays, all the enterprises in the fashion industry face the problem of variability of supply and demand. Working in fashion implies facing rapid changes, and the success or failure of a company is often determined by the company's ability to adapt and respond quickly to these changes. In addition to having to deal with large quantities of information, the companies must ensure the availability of all their products, in all the stores worldwide, while optimizing inventory levels. This research will focus on Christian Dior Couture and more specifically on the Eyewear. The immediate objective of this research project is to optimize the inventory while maintaining the sales. The information on stock out rates crossed with the sales quantity, the stock and the coverage enables supply chain's managers to make decisions at a store level and at a reference level to reduce the stock at its optimal value without compromising the sales' level. In the future, further studies could be made to try and optimise the reordered quantities in addition to optimizing the current stores' stock.

Crowdsourcing can today be found in practically any industry, but the extent to which it is used differ widely. A report from last year, published by the crowdsourcing platform eYeka (eYeka 2015b), shows that the fashion industry is among the industries using crowdsourcing the least. Brands that are more inclined to using crowdsourcing are those working with fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). That includes many brands from the food & beverage industry such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Danone etc. This study builds on this knowledge to explore the use of crowdsourcing in the food & beverage industry to find out if that experience can be used in the fashion industry where it is not widely used today. To identify different approaches of crowdsourcing used in the food & beverage industry 78 crowdsourcing campaigns from 9 brand during a two years period (2014-2015) was analysed. The analysis resulted in the identification of 3 main approaches: crowdsourcing as ideation, customer engagement and crowdsourcing for creation/production. More importantly this study comes to the conclusion that the way crowdsourcing is used by the brands in the food & beverage industry is not formed in such a way that it is exclusive to the industry in question. There are no immediate boundaries for the fashion industry to adopt the same way of working. If the fashion industry would like to follow the trend in food & beverage industry they should focus more on the creative ideation side of crowdsourcing and less on the creation, and most of all on marketing. However, there are also other areas they can learn from like Business Development.

No description available.

Planetary Boundaries (PB) and Circular Economy (CE) are becoming the paradigm for sustainability. There is an increasing interest to operationalise PB into a framework for businesses to maximise profitability within environmental limits. The context of the cotton textile industry makes a good setting for understanding the casual chain of connections between the socio-economic system expressed by extensive global supply chain of cotton, and its ecological interconnection with the Earth’s system that is put under pressure. For this study, life cycle assessment (LCA) is recognised as a suitable approach for measuring the linkages between those two systems. Results show that among all phases of the life cycle of a cotton t-shirt, the usage phase is the most impacting for most of environmental indicators, followed by the manufacturing and farming phase. Production or extraction of raw material as elements considered upstream in the supply chain are the predominant cause of impacts in this case study. Increasing circularity of the system yields to an improvement in environmental performance. However, the system remains largely unsustainable when taking into account the state of the Earth’s system, through the PB. When assessing sustainability through LCA, ecological references like PB, must be considered to understand absolute environmental sustainability a product system. This will reveal whether less impacting options in the system, are still deteriorating a state of the environment as a part of the Earth’s system, which needs to be the area of protection. In conclusion, linking planetary boundaries to life cycle assessment can help assess the absolute environmental sustainability, as opposed to relative sustainability, of a production system. Combining an assessment of the state of the environment (safe, critical/uncertain, at risk), and the assessment of environmental hotspots of the system under scrutiny, will determine where priority for goals and actions of improvements for environmental sustainability needs most attention.