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Fair or Fake? : Consumers’ Attitudes Towards Sustainability Information in the Footwear Industry.

This study focuses on sustainability information and consumers’ attitude and perception of sustainability information in the footwear industry. Sustainability has become increasingly important in the fashion industry; thus, the footwear industry has not reached the same level of interest and attention. In addition, companies do not know how to communicate sustainability and sustainability information and therefore, green marketing has evolved as an opportunity for companies to communicate sustainability. However, the downside of green marketing is that it can be perceived as untrustworthy and mistaken for greenwashing. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand consumers’ attitude and perception of sustainability and sustainability information in the footwear industry. To reach a suitable customer segment, a collaboration with Vagabond Shoemakers was initiated. This enabled the data collection to be held in the Vagabond Store in Gothenburg via a selfcompletion questionnaire. The data was analysed quantitatively via regression analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics. The regression analysis shows several significant correlations between dependent and independent variables such as the consumers’ attitude towards sustainability in general and their attitude towards sustainability information in the footwear industry. The result proves that the consumers are interested in receiving sustainability information when purchasing footwear. However, the consumers do not believe they receive enough sustainability information in either brick-and-mortar retail stores or online. Despite that the consumers of this study tend to believe that sustainability information in general is trustworthy, they do not believe that sustainability information in the footwear industry is trustworthy. This is unfortunate as the consumers of this study show interest in and value sustainability information and believe it is an important aspect when purchasing footwear. The result of this study contributes to anunderstanding of consumers’ perception and attitude towards sustainability information in thefootwear industry. This can be a foundation for developing green marketing strategies that companies can utilise so as to educate and inform consumers about sustainability and sustainable development. By utilising green marketing as a communication tool, companies have the possibility to affect consumers’ attitude, intention and behaviour towards sustainable consumption.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hb-12714
Date January 2017
CreatorsJahnstedt, Johanna, Widén, Ellinor
PublisherHögskolan i Borås, Akademin för textil, teknik och ekonomi, Högskolan 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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