Improving sustainable fashion marketing and advertising: A reflection on framing message and target audience

The fashion industry is known to be one of the most polluted industries in the world. To date, it is crucial to minimize its impacts and change the modern fashion consumption. Sustainable fashion can be defined as a system that promotes ecological integrity, social quality, and human flourishing through products, action, relationships, and practices of use (Fletcher, 2013). There is still, to date, a lack of efficiency in advertising and marketing sustainable fashion (Boyd, 2010; United Nations Environment Program, 2005).

Framing message can significantly influence how a problem is perceived and how alternative decisions are evaluated. Many environmental situations such as pesticides, climate change, and animal protection have been framed both positively (focused on the gains) and negatively (focused on the losses; Davis, 1995). According to Tversky and Kahneman (1981), framing a decision problem with a “gain versus loss” approach will make people exhibit loss aversion. Moreover, positive psychology suggests that positive emotions create associations that build increased receptiveness to new ideas, possibilities, and interpretations (Fitzpatrick and Stalikas, 2008). This implies that positively framed marketing messages could create positive emotion to facilitate desired behavioral change (Harris & Harrison, 2012). Indeed, Hwang, Youngji, Sonali, & Karpova (2016) reported a positive influence on consumers to purchase products by reminding them of the intrinsic rewards of the products social attributes. As a result, positive framing message seems to be a strong marketing tool, which can help promoting sustainable fashion.

While framing message seems to be an appropriate tool, adverts are efficient only if you target the appropriate audience. Some consumers seem more likely to be an ideal target for sustainable fashion adverts. Indeed, Wuertz (2015) showed that people who have a positive attitude toward the environment tend to exhibit pro-environmental behavior. According to Ramus and Killmer (2007), pro-environmental behavior is a kind of prosocial behavior, which is considered as attitudes concerned with the welfare of others. These attitudes include sharing, volunteering, and donating. Wuertz (2015) also underlined the relationship between prosocial behavior and the personality trait of agreeableness by stating that “people who score high in agreeableness tend to be more caring, empathetic, modest, and gentle; agreeableness is associated with altruism, and prosocial behavior.” Agreeableness and conscientiousness were found to be significant predictors of pro-environmental concern (Hirsh, 2010). Moreover, empathy can be related to prosocial behavior. Empathy relates to the ability to respond affectively to others’ emotions, reacting positively to others’ needs, and to support or spare another person (Overgaauw, Rieffe, Broekhof, Crone, & Güroğlu, 2017). It is also commonly described as the moral emotion concerning the welfare of others, facilitating relationships and positively influencing people to engage in prosocial behavior (Mencl & May, 2009). Following the concepts of emotions, empathy holds in its core two components: cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy involves taking others’ perspective in a specific situation, if someone is suffering for instance. The affective component involves feelings of compassion and sympathy. Both components can be studied when it comes to prosocial behavior (Mencl & May, 2009). It has been suggested that high levels of empathy created a higher level of awareness in a situation—problem with ethical considerations, especially when the situation in particular involves suffering or pain as a result of the decisions people might make (Mencl & May, 2009). Thus, consumers who demonstrate prosocial behavior, high level of agreeableness, and empathy seem to be the perfect target audience for sustainable fashion adverts.

While there is still a lack of academic studies on consumer behavior and sustainable fashion, there is a need for the fashion industry to become more sustainable. Further work on improving sustainable fashion advertising as well as better understanding the target audience is to date necessary.