To Be or Not to Be Emotional about Sustainability

An exploratory study of Finnish consumers’ views on sustainability in the clothing sector

Abstract

To Be or Not to Be: Emotional about Sustainability in Product/Service Descriptions

Sustainability has become a buzz word in business (Viljanen & Juuti 2018). This phenomenon can also be observed in the brief product descriptions provided in the clothes tags by the clothing industry, which has a notorious reputation for pollutive production processes. How are companies presenting their products to buying customers in the limited space provided by the clothes tags? The state of our environment requires sustainability measures: this is a rational observation. Yet, sustainability seems also an emotional issue for some customer segments, more so than to the others. We address how consumers make buying decisions: rationally or emotionally or using a mix of the aforementioned. Is the content of the product labels helping consumers make the types of buying decisions that they want or are they misleading them? We will particularly examine sustainability as an aspect of making the purchasing decision. The use of specific words as an indicator of sustainability has been undertaken in a number of studies ( Kotonen 2019; Kotonen & Savonen 2014) This article explores the most common terms or words used in sustainable garment clothes tags, which consequently help purchasers make informed decisions about whether they are buying sustainable goods - through identifying specific terminology. Athletes require rigorous protection against the cold and the sun when exercising. Such outgoing consumers may be assumed to be also interested in nature protection and environmentally-friendly materials. The aim of the present article is to analyse the clothes tags collected during 2018-2020 with a specific focus on the clothing sold for athletic purposes with a special focus on the discourse used. The theoretical framework of the paper will involve both sustainability: economic, environmental and social sustainability viewpoints, as well as discourse analytical approaches, both quantitative and qualitative.

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