Marketing sustainable fashion: The influence of brand tier, text and video on promoting green brand extension. Case study: H&M and Armani

Abstract

Being one of the biggest industries polluting the environment the most, fashion has been getting more and more pressure for sustainable conducts concerning both environment and social impacts. Consumer awareness for sustainability and sustainable fashion has been raising, which results in an increasing number of sustainable fashion products. These sustainable clothing come from either a totally new sustainable brand or as green brand extension of an existing often famous parent brand. Promoting these sustainable fashion products remain a challenge for both new brand or green brand extension, which has raised interest from managerial and academic communities. This paper, therefore, aims at providing marketing managers of fashion companies with more knowledge how to promote sustainable fashion effectively. The use of brand name, brand tier, text and video are examined in this research as the potential tools to successfully marketing sustainable fashion.

The theoretical background for this research is based on two main areas, sustainable consumption and brand related theories. Various studies covering these two areas were discussed in this research and helped the author to form the hypothesis. Quantitative research using self-monitored online survey was used to gather data for this study. Facebook was used as the platform to distribute the online survey in 2018 which brought 154 valid responses. The data were analysed with descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The main finding of this study was the strong influence of the parent brand tier on the consumer evaluation towards the green brand extensions. The respondents in this research believed the green brand extension from Armani, the high tier brand, as being sustainable, while they could not decide whether the green brand extension from H&M, the low tier brand, is sustainable or not. This finding complemented several studies before which did not include a real brands and probably as a result did not find the relationship between the parent brand and the green brand extensions. The recommendation for marketing managers is to carefully choose the brand name and examine different options for brand strategies to promote sustainable fashion.

Keywords: Sustainable fashion, green marketing, green brand extension, brand tier, brand extension evaluation, consumer behaviour, ethical fashion, green fashion