The fashion supply chain, even if represents one of the most important economies of the European industry, is one of the most polluting industries in the world, being a huge consumer of water, electricity and chemicals, and discharging massive quantities of wastes to land. Despite this fact, only few contributions have offered an analysis of the practices adopted by fashion companies to reduce its environmental impact. This paper present an empirical study on the sustainability practices adoption of Italian companies in the fashion Clothing, Leather industries. The research has been conducted through an online survey submitted to a sample of 192 Italian companies, having respectively the 14 and 15 ATECO 2007 code in the AIDA database, with a response rate of 13%. The results have been analyzed through the statistical software SPSS, in order to conduct a cluster analysis and 6 different clusters have been identified. Companies belong to cluster 1 do not apply any sustainability practices, even if they are coherent with what they declare on their website. Companies of cluster 2 adopt some practices, but sustainability is not integrated into their culture. Cluster 3 is composed by companies that declare a high interest to the environment, mainly for marketing reason. This way, companies of this group represent the ones more misaligned and not consistent from the practices declared on their website and the one really implemented. Cluster 5 is composed by companies endorsing environmental sustainability as a part of the company values and a high level of practices implemented is reported. Last, companies belonging to Cluster 6 have the environmental sustainability as a strategic objective and implements sustainability practices in a consistent and coordinated way.

This paper aims to investigate the alignment between fashion companies’ CSR policy, as communicated through company website, and CSR retail practices customers can actually observe or get information about when visiting company’s retail stores. The case study analysis is carried out using the Mystery Shopping technique. The sample is made up of companies belonging to the top of the fashion luxury pyramid, whilst the visited stores are located in Italy. The purpose of this paper is to provide a classification of companies’ behaviours in deploying CRS policy at the retail level, and to highlight different levels of fit between companies’ CSR policy and CSR practices communicated at the retail-store level. Our results reveal that several companies show a mismatch between their CSR policy and CRS practices communicated in stores to customers.

The aim of this paper is to understand which are the most effective social media strategies for gaining customer engagement for fashion companies. The study has been conducted using the empirical research methodology and the information has been collected with the use of an online survey distributed among companies belonging to the fashion industry. 42 questionnaires have been collected and therefore discussed. The analysis led to the definition of a list of strategies used by fashion companies on the adoption of social media tools. Subsequently, activities and the social tools able to improve customer engagement have been analysed. Finally, according to the size of the companies and to their positioning on the market, a descriptive analysis of the results have been carried out, comparing companies with similar characteristics. The research shows that companies of the same segment adopt the same approach to social media as well as a similar set of social media marketing strategies. The findings of this paper confirm the growing interest both from academics and practitioners for Social Media Marketing tools and they will suggest implications to fashion brands to manage their customer engagement and their social media activity.