Fashion Brands

Abstract Companies today are striving to manage sustainable business models in their production and promotional environments, including initiatives such as waste reduction and the decreasing number of single-use products. An example of this type of management is the initiatives based on the circular economy, which have gained increasing attention from the business and political environments. This type of business is understood as a system in which products are transformed and given a new use after they fulfill their primary purpose, evidencing the possible and necessary synergy between the economy and the environment. The environmental impact of the textile industry is part of the current debate, deriving a series of questions about the sustainability of the business model on which the fashion industry is based and the promotion of its products, especially in the face of the profile of a consumer committed to ethics and environmental responsibility, with preference given to brands that are committed to these principles. Considering the aforementioned, this chapter aims to analyze the role played by some women’s fashion YouTubers in Spain, in the promotion of sustainable brands with initiatives and Happiness Management, based on the circular economy as is the case of H&M, Zara and MANGO.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have revolutionized all human interactions, creating new spaces and platforms for consumption and entertainment. In that regard, marketing and advertising have had to adapt by refocusing existing tools, as well as creating new strategies to reach their target audiences. Among these emerging tools are the Branded Content, which combines the conventional advertising message with entertainment and ICT, to create emotional and entertainment links between the consumer and the brands. However, given the novelty of Branded Content as an object of academic study, this research seeks to make a mapping of the state of the art that serves as a starting point for the epistemological understanding of the phenomenon, as well as to know the different conceptual positions of the most cited authors of Branded Content, specifically in fashion marketing research. For this objective, a bibliometric analysis is performed through a strategy of co-occurrence and co-citation of Boolean operators from the Scopus database, using the BibExcel tool for frequency counting and VosViewer for the visualization of data and interaction maps. The results indicate that between 2016 and 2018 the co-citation keywords varied widely, from terms such as "content analysis" and "marketing" in 2016, to "fashion films" in 2018, which clearly shows that there is not yet an academic and possibly even a pragmatic consensus on the delimitations of Branded Content.

Purpose – Consumers gift themselves with luxury fashion brands, yet the motives for self-gifting are not well understood. Whereas traditionally, self-gifting is defined as self-orientated in nature, luxury brands are seen as social statements, and self-gifting of luxury fashion brands that combine these two controversial areas is an interesting research topic. This paper aims to address this issue by exploring the self-gifting behaviour of consumers, in particular focusing on the personal motives of gifting oneself with luxury fashion brands.
Design/methodology/approach – The study takes a multi-qualitative approach involving a small (N=19) but rich sample. Data collection and analysis were triangulated to reduce researcher biases.
Findings – The study provides key dimensions for understanding consumers’ perceptions of luxury fashion brands and self-gifting motives (self- and socially-orientated). The findings reveal that reflections from others are part of the self-gifting phenomenon. It appeared that although self-orientated benefits and personally-orientated motives trigger the self-gifting act, the act of actually purchasing explicitly luxury brands for oneself as a gift may be triggered by other-orientated benefits and socially-orientated motives. The findings also imply that luxury holds a self-orientated aspect; luxury brands are not only purchased for socially-orientated reasons but also for reasons related to oneself. In addition, the findings discuss the act of shopping, where the act can be perceived as a luxury experience and overrun the importance of the brand.
Practical implications – The findings provide insights to consumers’ gifting behaviour that may be valuable for retailers and fashion marketers as they plan for marketing activities related to their customers’ self-gifting.
Originality/value –Self-gifting represents a view of gifting that remains under-researched. This study uncovers the motives for gifting oneself with luxury fashion brands, a further sub-area in need for more investigation.
Keywords: household goods, gifts, luxury items, self-gifting