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A study on luxury and sustainable consumption: mixing and matching

Purpose: the objective of this research is to get a better understanding of luxury consumption in today’s society and the connection to sustainability. Consumers are no longer asking but demanding more sustainable practices from the fashion industry, especially the fast-fashion companies, calling any minor error or threat of “Greenwashing” (Joshi and Rahman 2019). Although, when it comes to luxury brands the level of exigence seems to be different. The aim is to understand the influence of sustainability when consumers are acquiring new pieces, in particular luxury ones. The purpose is to answer in which ways these two concepts are affected by each other and consequently if they will affect the luxury consumers. Method: An inductive approach was used by the researchers. 15 semi structured interviews were conducted to people from 10 different countries with ages between 22 to 60. The duration of these interviews was between 20 to 45 minutes and a questionnaire was designed in order to have a structure but also new questions were made as follow up or elaboration on what interviewees mentioned, where particular themes are defined and the questions are formulated during the interviews to extract the desirable answers in accordance with the themes (Bryman et al. 2021). Findings: Six themes were detected after the analysis of the results. First, the contemporary luxury consumer situation, followed by the feelings that occur after consuming luxury fashion products where there are mixed emotions of pleasure and shame. In the same sector, the current brand perception, arised the conversation about the lack of brand love. From this angle, the mixed consumption patterns that revealed the emerging phenomenon of consuming both luxury and fast-fashion came to support the absence of brand love. Lastly, in the context of sustainability, the view of sustainability among luxury consumers and the transition to more sustainable practices in purchasing fashion products were the other two themes that were discovered. Managerial Implications: the matter of the absence of brand love seems of great significance for executives and managers in luxury brands. Another aspect is the fact that managers could further capitalise on the quality that is provided by their brands since all participants expressed their preference in luxury products attributable to their endurance, managers could make their pivotal point, in the marketing efforts, the exceptional quality. Another contribution to get a better insight to the people involved in the industry, from designers to managers is to obtain a deeper understanding on how much sustainability efforts could affect or benefit their business.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hb-32218
Date January 2024
CreatorsOrtiz Pages, Arianne, Motsiopoulou, Christina
PublisherHögskolan i Borås, Akademin för textil, teknik och ekonomi
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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