Introduction
Social and environmental damage from unsustainable fashion manufacturing (Kang, Liu, & Kim, 2013) should be addressed using sustainability marketing communications (Lu, Bock, & Joseph, 2013). Millennials are both sustainability-conscious (Lu et al., 2013) and prevalent consumers of luxury (Giovannini, Xu, & Thomas, 2015). Perceptions of luxury products using recycled fabrics were found to be negative (Beckham & Voyer, 2014). Millennials purchasing sustainable luxury goods using recycled materials may be viewed as paradoxical due to mixing prestigious luxury with disposable recyclables.
Approach
Impression Formation Theory (Asch, 1946) was used to determine how brand characteristics merge into a sustainable luxury brand impression. This study proposed the following hypotheses.
H1a: As compared to millennials exposed to a sustainable luxury brand description, those exposed to a luxury only brand description will have a higher level of luxury impression.
H1b: As compared to millennials exposed to a luxury only brand description, those exposed to a sustainable luxury brand description will have a higher level of sustainability impression.
H2: (a) Luxury brand impression and (b) sustainable brand impression will positively influence the attitude toward the luxury brand.
H3: Attitude toward the luxury brand will positively influence millennials’ purchase intention of its goods.
Method
Between-subjects experimental design was used to test the hypotheses. Two randomly assigned groups received an online survey via Amazon Mechanical Turk with either a luxury only (without the description of recycled materials) or a sustainable luxury brand (describing the use of recycled materials) description. The survey consisted of 5-point Likert-type scales measuring: brand impression (Aaker, 1997), brand attitude (Spears, & Singh, 2004), and willingness to buy luxury brand products (Dodds, Monroe, & Grewal, 1991). SPSS and MPlus were used to perform statistical analysis and multi-group SEM.
Results
A usable sample of 355 Millennial consumers was an average of 28 years of age (49% male and 51% female). The manipulation of brand description (luxury only and sustainable luxury) was successful. Reliability analysis revealed that all the variables had Cronbach’s α > .70 indicating an acceptable internal consistency. Hypotheses 1b, 2a, and 3 were supported, while hypotheses 1a and 2b were not supported.
Conclusion
The impression of luxury was the sole impression to significantly predict attitude towards the brand, and attitude positively influenced purchase intention for both brand descriptions. Luxury brands should consider using recycled materials and provide marketing communication that favors sustainable brand positioning.

• Virginia Rolling(Auburn University, USA)
• Amrut Sadachar(Auburn University, USA)