The new way of fashion consuming, drivers and barriers to growing the wardrobe with peer-to-peer renting service Case: Robes Rental

Abstract

The circular economy is a topical issue in fashion and developing a sustainable fashion market. To bring the fashion industry to a sustainable level, we must diminish our consumption of fashion and find new ways of consuming clothing. Collaborative consumption through renting is one of the solutions to this issue. Peer-to-peer fashion renting has yet to be researched broadly but is used widely in other markets.

This thesis studies peer-to-peer renting from the consumers’ point of view. The attitudes and thoughts of Finnish consumers are interviewed after testing the case company Robes Rental’s digital peer-to-peer fashion renting service. Robes Rental is a Helsinki-based start-up offering Finnish consumers a new way of consuming fashion through peer-to-peer renting. The drivers and barriers towards adopting the new consuming model of fashion are composed and discussed. Thus, the research question is stated: What kind of drivers and barriers are identified within the peer-to-peer renting service of fashion among Finnish consumers? Case: Robes Rental.

This study is a qualitative study using a case study as a research method and the approach used is the inductive perspective. The inductive research method is utilised for this research, and the main data collection is done with seven semi-structured interviews. The main goal of this research is to explore the drives and barriers to peer-to-peer renting fashion services from the perspective of Finnish consumers. The study aims to explore people’s attitudes towards renting one’s own clothes and renting other people's clothing.

The findings of this study contain five different drivers and four barriers towards starting peer-to-peer fashion renting identified by the interviewees. The drivers found are economic efficiency, a versatile yet compact wardrobe, curated quality fashion, sustainability, and community. The identified barriers are cautiousness, needed effort, Robes fitting to you and you fitting to Robes, and the lack of need for renting.

The findings establish that learning new consuming habits for fashion needs time and effort from both the consumers and service providers. Nevertheless, the need for lowering the consumption of fashion for a more sustainable fashion industry also creates a need for peer-to-peer fashion renting as a new way of using clothes, and the demand of consumers is already shifting towards this change.