Purchasing sustainable fashion : How to accelerate consumers’ willingness to act and their actual actions

Sammanfattning: Due to the adverse environmental impacts today’s clothing consumption behaviour is causing, it is necessary to accelerate the awareness of sustainable fashion among consumers. Fashion companies are facing difficulties, as sustainable consumption has not yet made an impact on consumers’ fashion purchasing decision. To accelerate the sales of newly produced sustainable fashion, the willingness to purchase has to increase. This study suggests that it through different factors is possible to influence consumers’ rational behaviour. It examines the gap between Swedish fashion consumers’ willingness to purchase sustainable fashion and their actual actions from data collected through focus groups. The difficulty to recognize sustainable fashion, as well as the limitations of product options, appealing aesthetic and design explains the emerged gaps. Consumers are also requiring a modified usage of the concept as sustainability today is used without a consistent meaning. Findings indicate that fashion consumers’ demands sustainable fashion with appealing design, high quality as well as varied product options. It also showed a request for a standardized, simple and easily accessible label, representing the idea of sustainability equally without any room for interpretation. A standardized label symbolized with a consistent meaning could also be apart of the development of making sustainability a sustained trend - making sustainability the ‘new black’.