In response to the global trend of making sustainable development an urgent task, luxury fashion brands actively embrace it in their corporate philosophies and management policies. However, despite the widespread consensus in the related industry and the strong will of companies for the sustainable development of luxury brands, there are still few cases of luxury fashion brands successfully implementing sustainable development. This study examined the impact of the types of message framing on the sustainability marketing of luxury fashion brands, focusing on their effects on perceived message effectiveness, sustainable brand image, and brand attitudes. An online survey was administered to 464 Korean consumers in their 20s to 40s to test the hypotheses. The results showed that perceived effectiveness was higher for negatively framed messages (loss) than for their positive counterparts (gain). The types of message framing did not significantly affect sustainable brand messages, and no significant difference in perceived brand image was found, regardless of message type. Perceived message effectiveness exerted a significant positive effect on sustainable brand image, and such an image had a significant positive effect on brand attitudes. The results provide implications for related research and practical implications for the development of competitive sustainability marketing strategies for luxury fashion—an industry still in its infancy.

This study will explore the paradoxical tension influencer face when promoting sustainable luxury leisure activities for sponsoring brands. Social media influencers play a pivotal role in this advocacy as luxury consumers are inspired to associate themselves with sophisticated social values, superior social status, or differentiate themselves from others with lower esteem. However, the commodification of their influence to stimulate consumption amongst their audience and followers creates paradoxical tensions between their brand performance, economic incentives, and ethical socio-ecological outcomes. Despite numerous studies have been undertaken to examine the role of influencers in sustainable luxury tourism, there is still a need for understanding of how influencers negotiate the paradoxical tensions arising from (a) sustainability and luxury; (b) instrumental goals and personal brand identity. Data sources for this study include influencer interviews and social media contents created by the influencers, such as video, blog posts and tweets.

Cortical activity was assessed in fashion-luxury consumers with a different sustainability orientation, in order to obtain insight on implicit dynamic towards eco-luxury products. Findings highlighted a strong emotional negative impact elicited by sustainability pictures implying a high engagement in luxury consumers when exposed to specific sensitive issues.

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.

While extant research examines the consumption of luxury products, the disposal behaviors of such products and business’ means for promoting this behavior through social media has yet to be examined. This research builds on belief congruence theory and the anticonsumption literature to understand how religiosity (with prescriptions against material possessions and performing actions just for show) influences disposal method of luxury goods and disposal behavior on social media. Specifically, findings show that extrinsically (intrinsically) religious consumers are more likely to throw away (donate) luxury products after use. The moderating influence of emotions is also explored to show that intrinsically (extrinsically) religious consumers are more (less) likely to use sustainable methods of product disposal for luxury and non-luxury products alike after being primed to feel shame/guilt in comparison to a control condition. A separate study manipulates product type (luxury vs. non-luxury) and product state (used vs. new), showing that extrinsically religious consumers are most (least) likely to use sustainable disposal methods when a product is used (new) and non-luxury (luxury). Additionally, findings show that identity mediates this relationship and has clear outcomes on social media behavior regarding product disposal and end-consumption behavior with luxury products. Implications for belief congruence theory and advertising practitioners are provided (with a specific emphasis on advertisers of luxury products using social media).

Authenticity is an important topic in business activities and society at large. Sustainability management and marketing activities are required as consumers become more interested in society. The consumer evaluation of brand authenticity is a crucial factor in a brand’s reputation and long-term growth, which affects brand loyalty, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) and purchase behavior. With this latest trend, luxury brands are paying attention to sustainability activities, but consumer confidence in the sustainability of luxury brands is still low. Experts emphasize that building trust with customers by promising authenticity is a key challenge. Meanwhile, luxury brands are actively communicating with consumers through SNS, such as Instagram. Social media marketing directly and indirectly influences brand authenticity, as well as purchase intentions and eWOM. Nevertheless, there is little exposure to sustainability activities in the social media accounts of luxury brands. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the sustainability activities on the social media of luxury brands and brand authenticity, as well as the effects of brand authenticity on eWOM and purchase intention. For this study, we conducted an online survey targeting individuals with ages of 20–30 years and who are highly interested in society while actively using social media. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS 21.0 software package. The main finding of this study reveals that consumers are more aware of brand authenticity when they see an Instagram post that includes messages about sustainability rather than a post without any such messages. In addition, brand authenticity has positive effects on eWOM and purchase intention. These findings suggest that sustainability marketing by luxury brands leads to positive consumer response, and the broadcasting of messages about sustainability via social media is effective for the marketing strategy of luxury brands.

Ever since sustainable development was brought up in the United Nation in 1987, sustainability has been one of the top priorities in the policy making process of different governments as well as different companies. Despite the fact that different industries have been putting efforts in promoting sustainability in their business, little effort was initially shown in the luxury industry. The sector has been regularly criticized by the general public for its lack of sustainable development imperatives. This has led to an extensive discussion in the academic field on whether luxury and sustainable development are by nature compatible or not. Some scholars suggest that the two concepts are indeed able to co-exist as they share many similarities. They suggest that virtual rarity is the key to increase the motivation of luxury consumers for sustainable luxury purchase. However, no further studies have concerned the relation between virtual rarity and sustainable luxury. It is the objective of the present paper to challenge this hypothesis, confronting it with the market perspective. Studying the views of Western regular luxury consumers towards the two concepts should ultimately help luxury managers design more efficient, and hopefully effective, strategies to promote sustainability in their companies. To achieve this objective, the paper is organized into the following parts. First, a thorough literature review helps defining the concepts of virtual rarity and of sustainable luxury, and ultimately merges both. Then, the qualitative methodology to conduct the study is explained, along with a detailed description of the methods used for data collection and data analysis. The paper then focuses on the most important theoretical and managerial findings, still acknowledging further research developments due to research limitations.

On the one hand, organic food consumption has emerged as a rapidly growing consumption trend, juxtaposed against the unsustainability of industrialized food provisions. On the other hand, recent reports highlight that premium food consumption is one of the fastest growing luxury market segments worldwide. This paper draws on the theory of social practices in order investigate how organic food consumption can be understood as an emerging luxury fashion trend, comprised of multiple interrelated ‘nexuses of doings and sayings’ that represent the elements of, and situated within the broader context of consumer culture. In this endeavour, we have conducted a situated investigation of organic food consumption in South Korea. Our findings illustrate that Korean consumers engage in organic food consumption not merely for their superior health benefits or sustainability concerns. Instead, organic consumption conveys three distinct consumption value types – namely, functional (e.g., superior quality), experiential (e.g., feeling better about themselves because they purchase eco-friendly produce), and symbolic (e.g., allows them to convey their social status). Importantly, when these value types are taken together, they closely resemble the value derived from luxury fashion, which lead us to the conclusion that organic food consumption can be conceived as a particular type of luxury fashion trend. The paper concludes with the discussion of theoretical contributions and managerial implications.

Overview Researchers have tried to identify the compability of sustainability and luxury fashion(Kapferer and Denizeau, 2014; Henings, Wiedmann, Klarmann and Behrens, 2013; Achabou and Dekhili, 2013; Joy, Sherry, Venkatesh, Wang and Chan, 2012). These studies have suggested that sustainability does not hold much relevance for luxury brands from the perspective of consumers who expect luxury brand offerings to be made from high quality products even if they come at a cost to the environment or the society in general. Davies, Lee and Ahonkhai (2012) investigated the importance of ethical consumption in luxury brand consumers, they observed that even though a consumer may have high ethical inclination while purchasing a commodity product but when buying luxury, they expect the highest quality and brand experience even if it comes a cost to the sustainability concerns. Achabou and Dekhili (2013) studied the consumer acceptance towards the usage of recycled materials in luxury fashion clothing and observed that despite the increasing environment conservation concern in society, consumers expect the brand to be of the highest quality standards and not recycled. Kapferer and Denizeau (2014) also observed that luxury buyers believe that there is no synchony between luxury and sustainability especially in the context of social and economic harmony aspect of sustainable development. Despite the consumer insentivity towards sustainability when it comes to luxury, brands like Stella McCartney and its parent company, the Kering group are increasingly emphasizing on being sustainable. Every year Kering’s brands, which also include Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Saint Laurent and, are measuring greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, water pollution, water consumption, waste, and changes in ecosystem services associated with land use. It puts numbers against each of those areas in order to see the impact of its supply chain on the planet in monetary terms (Arthur, 2016). Now the question arises that when consumers are not much bothered by sustainability standards in luxury industry in general,as suggested by academic researches, then why are the luxury fashion brands emphasizing on being sustainable and marketing this idea in their advertisemnts and brand campaigns. The increasing inclination of luxury fashion brands for being considered as sustainable suggests that there is a strong consumer base for sustainable luxury as well which has not been studied so far. Although Janssen, Vanhamme and Leblanc (2016) have emphasized the need to understand customer evaluations of responsible luxury brand image and its impact on the customer attitudes towards luxury brands, they did not study the consumer characteristics which can influence the responsible luxury brand evaluations. This study attempts to identify the consumers for sustainabile luxury and profile them on the basis of their personality traits and demographics. This will be particularly helpful for luxury brands in understanding their customers better and accordingly align their marketing efforts with the expectations and personalities of their target consumers.

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.