The present study applies asymmetric analysis and models complex antecedent conditions to identify shoppers with high purchase intentions to sustainable fashion products’ (SFPs) and high eWOM intention. The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method was used to assess the cause-and effect process. The examination was based on information process, and decision making of consumers in two countries (China and Korea) was found to vary by nationality. Specifically, consumers in the two countries provided different responses on sustainable fashion change configuration, suggesting differences in the characteristics of sustainable and non-sustainable fashion consumers and sustainable fashion intentions. The results show that various casual recipes on sustainable fashion change the configuration and sustainable fashion intention on corners 1 and 4. Both Chinese and Korean consumers do not have several unique demographic and fashion expenditure configurations that characterize consumers with high intention to buy and eWOM intention favorable toward sustainable fashion. In the Chinese consumers’ data, computing with words (CWW) showed that young•married•low-income•low-education•low-fashionexpenditure cases (consumers) were lower on negation purchase and eWOM intentions (i.e., an accurate screening configuration identifying consumers high io non-sustainable fashion intentions). The results also help identify consumer characteristics of sustainable fashion consumers and non-sustainable fashion consumers. Specifically, the results of the fsQCA suggest dissimilar confirmation to achieve purchase intention and eWOM intention of sustainable fashion and provide meaningful academic and managerial implications. The results of the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis also support and clarify the role of the theory of information process and the theory of reasoned action towards sustainable fashion.

Introduction The fashion business is known as one of the major industries that is suffering from rising concerns about the consumption of its product, which led to a reorganization of the fashion supply chain to become more sustainable three decades ago. The interest in the concept of sustainability and demand for sustainable marketing activities is gradually growing in the fashion industry due to the negative image and press it receives. Within the luxury fashion segment, the three main themes that are recognized to contribute to sustainability are exclusivity, craftmanship and limited production. However, luxury brands are increasingly shifting their attention and commitment towards environmental and social issues to be incorporated in the concept of sustainability. Yet, the majority of consumers has little understanding or misunderstands the concept of sustainable fashion and marketing, which leads to a gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual behavior. As a result, fashion brands are trying to leverage their brand by making sustainability a key marketing strategy to raise awareness about social, environmental, economic and cultural issues. Extant research has not explored this recent trend to understand how consumers evaluate fashion brands with a sustainable marketing communication, especially in the context of luxury brands. This study investigates how luxury and mass fashion brands can utilize sustainable marketing contents in social media communication to reach their target group and enhance their equity with sustainability associations. Theoretical Development Associative network models of memory have served as a fundamental framework for a wide range of studies related to the formation and transfer of associations. According to associative network theory, brand knowledge is represented in form of an associative network of memory nodes connected to each other. Nodes are activated when cues, such as advertising, are presented. Mere exposure to cues was shown to be sufficient to active associations and facilitate association transfer. While brands are continuously attempting to make use of associative power to leverage brand equity, extant research has provided compelling reasons to accept that association transfer can also result in brand dilution when a retrieval of conflicting or negative associations occurs. Especially in the context of luxury brands consisting of very unique associations and being different from mass brands in many regards, managing the brand’s associative network is a crucial task in order to send the right signals to consumers and maintain exclusivity. This study investigates how social media communication of different sustainability dimensions affects brand attitude and how it ultimately impacts behavioral outcomes in an attempt to build brand equity for mass and luxury fashion brands. Method and Data The hypotheses are tested with 273 respondents who participated in an online experiment. They were first asked to state their involvement with the category fashion. Subsequently, subjects were presented with a brand post either for the mass or luxury brand including claims related to one of the four sustainability dimensions or no claims for the control group respectively. The experiment consisted of a 2 (brand: mass or luxury) x 5 (sustainability dimensions: none, cultural, economic, environmental, social) factorial design. The measures that followed included attitudinal as well as behavioral constructs related to the brand, sustainability as well as social media use. Analysis of covariance is applied to test for main effects and interaction effects. Summary of Findings This study provides evidence that social media communication of a sustainable brand affects the purchase intention of consumers. The findings indicate a significant difference between the mass and the luxury brand used for this study. The mass brand exhibits the potential to leverage associations with cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability. However, the results only reveal a marginally significant higher purchase intention when cultural sustainability is communicated compared to when the brand does not provide any sustainable associations. In contrast, the luxury brand suffers from significant brand dilution across all four sustainability dimensions resulting in a decline in purchase intention. Key Contributions The findings reveal that sustainability communication exerts a diverging influence depending on the type of brand that is involved. This study suggests that mass brands are able to benefit from sustainability communication in an attempt to leverage brand equity. However, for a luxury brand this type of associations rather presents a liability that might dilute the brand. The findings of this study provide important insights for brand managers. Since mass brands are currently increasing efforts into sustainable communication in the fashion industry, the results suggest that this might be a promising investment. However, luxury brands are advised to carefully manage the communication of salient content related to sustainability as it might harm the invaluable and unique associations inherent in a luxury brand.

The concept of „Sustainability‟ has become as major concern and it used by consumers and corporations to convey the concept of taking care of the environment. Environmental concern has led to sustainable consumption in a variety of product categories, such as electricity, textiles, apparel, food, and grocery products (Chan, 2001; Harrison, Newholm, & Shaw, 2005; Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006a, 2006b). Interest of the negative environmental impacts are rapidly increasing in present fashion business and consumer behavior has become a rising concern of the consumption and fashion supply chain to apply sustainable consumption (Birtwistle & Moore, 2007; Fineman, 2001). The environmental and social concern recognized in fashion industry from 1990‟s. However, the complexity of conceptual definition of sustainability and ecologically responsible consumer generates different and mistaken perception to consumer. In addition, in fashion industry, the terms of „eco-fashion‟, „environmentally friendly fashion‟,„green fashion‟, „ethical fashion‟, and „sustainable fashion‟ are frequently used interchangeably to describe the same concept. These interchangeable terminology is leading to confusion of the readers by the non-unified terminology (Choi et al., 2012). Also, consumers seem to have narrow scope and little understanding of sustainable fashion. In general, consumers focuses on environmental aspect not the wide-range of complexity of environment, social, and economical concern (Cervellon, Hjerth, Ricard, & Carey, 2010). The growing number of fashion brands are leveraging on green branding initiatives. Green marketing is increasing rapidly in corporate aspects and for a consumer perspective, global consumers are recognizing a personal accountability to take responsibility for social and environmental issues. Despite the fact many of individuals‟ willingness to purchase green products has increased in the last few years, however, there is limited studies suggest that purchase of green or sustainable products. Consumer research on sustainable fashion has mainly focused on consumer behaviors towards sustainable fashion products (SFPs); however, relevant studies that examined the whole process of the predicting proenvironmental behavior cross nationally value and the eWOM are still scarce. The purposes of research model are 1) to identify the determinants of eWOM intention on consumers' purchase intentions, 2) to examine the information adoption process as precursors of purchase intention of sustainable fashion, and 3) to testify different message types effects to information adoption process.

Despite the consumer's interest in sustainable fashion and the sustainable fashion phenomenon in the fashion business being a serious issue for our society, only a limited number of studies focus on investigating the consumer's perceived value of sustainable fashion. Although eco-friendly consumption has been recognized as one of the major concerns of the fashion business, environmentally prudent consumption has not yet transformed into purchasing behavior. However, fashion companies try to offer many seasonal collections due to the fast fashion trends to meet the consumer's needs. Such trends have brought about an enormous amount of apparel waste, negative environmental impacts and serious questions about social issues. In addition, today’s fashion consumers appear to have a narrow point of view on sustainable/green fashion that focuses mainly on organic clothing, and avoids or shows no interest in the wider scope of sustainability encompassing environmental, social and economic concerns (Cervellon, Hjerth, Richard, & Carey, 2010). Increasing the consumption of sustainable fashion necessitates research into how fashion consumers make purchasing decisions. Therefore, the information and value of sustainable fashion need to be diffused by fashion consumers. Hethom and Ulasewicz (2008) stated that the consumer acts as a major stakeholder with the greatest impact on the development of a sustainable industry. Furthermore, it is necessary to examine the consumer's purchase decision-making process for sustainable fashion products in academia. According to previous studies, the awareness of sustainability issues is also growing due to the environmental impacts. However, this awareness has not yet affected apparel purchasing behavior and actual purchasing (Kim & Damhorst, 1998). In order to affect the behavior of fashion consumers and expand sustainable fashion in today's marketplace, it is essential to identify the influencing factors in purchase decision-making process for sustainable fashion products.

The market distribution channels has changed from single to multi-channels due to the diffusion of digital development products. In addition the new consumption emergence has been applied in showrooming and reverse-showrooming. One of well-known shopping district in South Korea, Dongdaemun, has been introduced Dongdaemun-based fashion brand which use on/offline multi-channel distribution. This study aims to segment multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands and analyse the effects of customer equity attributes, customer satisfaction, and re-purchase intention. The goals of this study are as follows: 1) to identify multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands, 2) to analyse the influence of multi-channel attributes on customer equity, customer satisfaction, and repurchase intention, 3) to explore the consumer group differences on shopping orientation. This study applied means-end chain theory to conduct in-depth interviews for the purpose of deriving the multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands and explore the influence of such attributes on customer equity, customer satisfaction, and re-purchase intention. This study collected 493 samples and structural equation modeling was used for final data analysis. The main findings of this study are as follows. The multi-channel attributes have a significant impact on value equity and brand equity. Relationship equity is influenced by product diversity, entertainment, and informativeness. The all of customer equity drivers have significantly impacts on repurchase intention and only brand equity have significant effect on repurchase intention. Also, customer satisfaction affects re-purchase intention. Brand equity have a significant influence on CLV. The consumers group differ in how consumers recognize multi-channel attributes of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands, based on channel preference. This study shows the importance of customer equity and suggests long-term implications for the development of Dongdaemun-based fashion brands.

The importance of sustainability is dramatically devoted in fashion industry because the fashion cycle period has been accelerated by fast trend changes. In the past 10 years, fashion companies were trying to meet consumer demands by mass production and quick response. However, due to the low price, consumers are taking low value to products which lead to tremendous amount of clothing waste. This fashion market movement caused social, environmental and economic issues. Therefore, we need to seek for apposite solutions by researchers and practitioners. The traditional educational efforts and approach did not apply to transformative action (Frisk, Larson, 2011). In order to diffuse sustainable knowledge and promote the sustainable behavior, a proper education system has to be developed. According to our pilot study, it shows that the respondents do not have basic knowledge of sustainability or they know the sustainability but it does neither directly nor indirectly impacts to consumer purchase intention and action. A method of this study is focusing on age group 20’s to 30’s because these age groups are the main consumers for the mass production fashion goods and received sustainable education in traditional academic institutions. This study tested a method that can fill the gap between attitude and action by classifying various types of knowledge and find out which knowledge type is the most applicable for fashion industry. The purpose of this study is to provide efficient ways and types to deliver sustainable knowledge which academic institutions and companies can apply. This study presents the results of the role of knowledge in attitude and purchase decision-making in sustainable fashion. Sustainability knowledge captures a broad scope that covers environmental, social and economic perspectives, but with regards to the fashion industry, environmental concern is focused the most. The study results reflects that the proper way of educating potential and existing fashion consumer will help the academic institution and fashion companies to reallocate their sustainable strategy to all three scopes of sustainability (Miller et al., 2011). More of academic institutions and fashion companies are participating to sustainable issues; it will raise the sustainable awareness, which will leads to diffusion of sustainable knowledge and green fashion trends.

Heat shock protein (HSP) 70, the highly conserved stress protein families, plays important roles in protecting cells against heat and other stresses in most animal species. In the present study, we identified and characterized four Hsp70 (RuHSP4, RuHSC70, RuHSP12A, RuGRP78) family proteins based on the expressed sequence tag (EST) analysis of the Korean rose bitterling R. uyekii cDNA library. The deduced RuHSP70 family has high amino acid identities of 72-99% with those of other species. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that RuHsp70 family clustered with fish groups (HSP4, HSC70, HSP12A, GRP78) proteins. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed the specific expression patterns of RuHsp70 family members in the early developmental stages and several tissues in Korean rose bitterling. The expression of 4 groups of Hsp70 family was detected in all tested tissue. Particularly, Hsp70 family of Korean rose bitterling is highly expressed in hepatopancreas and sexual gonad (testis and ovary). The expression of Hsp70 family was differentially regulated in accordance with early development stage of Rhodeus uyekii.