Browsing by Subject "kestävä muoti"

Sustainable fashion is phenomena that also fast fashion brands have taken as a part of their business plan. Clothing companies tell about their responsibility goals for sustainability development in corporate sustainability reports. These responsibility reports are usually used as a base for marketing texts in clothing companies’ Internet sites, and consumers can base their opinions about a company’s responsibility on these texts. The aim of this study is to research the discourses of sustainable fashion that companies are building in their marketing texts and how the marketing texts’ perceptions of sustainable fashion are related to the concept of sustainable fashion as defined in the study. The qualitative study was carried out using discourse analysis as the study method. The data consisted of three global clothing companies’ marketing texts that were collected from their internet sites and further from the categories that address responsibility. The data was analyzed by searching expressions that could embody sustainability or sustainable fashion. These expressions were then categorized as possible discourses of sustainable fashion. Five discourses of sustainable fashion were found. The discourse of responsibility typified the importance of responsibility to the companies by investing in responsibility by setting policies and by improving the supply chain management. The discourse of presence concentrated on the companies’ social activities such as education and employment of children and women on the production countries. The discourse of collaboration emphasized collaboration as especially positive action to the companies, helping them in building more positive picture and get forward with their actions. The discourse of nature conservation emphasized the reduction of the natural resources and the prevention of environmental problems. The discourse of consumerism concentrated on guiding the consumers on more sustainable activities. Based on the results, the clothing companies’ perceptions of sustainable fashion concentrate especially on securing the ecological and social sustainability. The economical side of sustainability emerged mostly as companies’ desire to keep the prices affordable. The business is not built on sustainability, but instead it can be seen as separate part of the business, which appears for example as separate sustainable fashion collections.

Fashion consumption has a big role in our everyday life. The environmental impact of the fashion industry is significant, so it would be important to change our ways of consuming fashion. In this study, I will find out which factors affect people's choices of fashion consumption, especially from the point of view of consumer psychology. I will use the literature and interview material. In addition, I will find out which factors affect the formation of an individual's fashion consumption behavior. In my research, I used an interview as a method of data acquisition. I conducted research interviews in theme interviews. Interviews consisted four 19-36-year-old consumers, who all had slightly different habits regarding fashion consumption. Each interview was about half an hour long. I recorded the interviews and transcribed them into text. After all there was 32 sheets of transcribed text. In the analysis, I first proceeded classification to the entire material and then emphasized to smaller details and search for meanings. Based on literature, important factors behind fashion consumption were the individual's identity, values and attitudes, motivation and needs, and emotional life. These factors were also clearly featured in research interviews. From the basis of both, literature and interviews, it was possible to distinguish factors influencing between the production of fashion and individual factors. Production factors include factors that are not dependent of the individual’s will, such as advertising and marketing, fashion production processes, policy, and access to information. Individual factors, by their name, are, however, closely connected to the individual, such as personality and identity, interests and social relationships. Based on the research results, it seems that the motivation of the individual plays a major role in making consumer choices and in adapting consumer behavior. What matters is whether the individual is motivated externally or internally to consume in a certain way. As Jansson-Boyd (2010, 118) states, those who are internally motivated tend to pursue a certain behavior longer than those who are externally motivated. Therefore, when seeking to change human consumption behavior, it is important to focus on how to motivate consumers internally for sustainable consumption.

Slow fashion as a term is still stabilizing its place and its significance is not yet extensively in the consciousness of fashion consumers. In this research I figure out about what the values and meanings of the concept of slow fashion are in the literature, and on that basis I investigate how slow fashion and its values and meanings appears in the websites description texts of domestic textile and clothing industry companies, based on ecolocigal and sustainable values. For the exaination of the phenomenon I have formed three themes from the basis of the theoretical background: design, production and user’s perspective. The material consisted about description texts of nine textile and clothing industry companies. The texts summarize the company and its values, and they were most commonly found on the web pages under "us" or "about us" tabs. I used content analysis to analyze the material and thematised it. First, I organized the expressions found in the material based on the three themes I formed on the basis of the theoretical background. After that I made own thematising frame to all these three theme. I built a whole new outline based on the contens of the material. In every texts about material were appeared expressons for all the three themes; design, production and user’s perpective. The themes were mixed together yet the contents of the phenomenon unchanged. There was formed three new themes about slow fashion in description texts of textile and clothing industry companies: responsibility in production, appreciation of local resources and resource saving. The values and meanings of slow fashion in the description texts correspond contentually to the literary image of the phenomenon, but the emphasis of content in these two different contexts is different.