SLOW FASHION

BRAND CUSTOMER
PERSONA
–THE PROFILE AND BUYING INSIGHTS
OF A SLOW FASHION BRAND CUSTOMER

Thesis for Master, 30 ECTS

Textile Management

Ann-Christiin Kerner
S153951

Thesis number: 2017.15.19

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Title: Slow Fashion Brand Customer Persona - The profile and buying insights of a slow
fashion brand customer.

Publication year: 2018

Author: Ann-Christiin Kerner

Supervisor: Viveka Torell Berghäll

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to expand knowledge of slow fashion brand customer
by creating a persona that communicates the characteristics and aspects that influence
purchase decisions of slow fashion consumers.

Method: Since slow fashion consumer concept is still rather unexplored area, qualitative
research strategy approach was chosen for this thesis, to get more deep data about the slow
fashion consumer profile and buying insights. To address the research questions, single case
study was used. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews that were
conducted with five female slow fashion consumers who had recently made a purchase from a
Swedish slow fashion brand MASKA’s online store. To analyse the data, a coding approach
was used. As a result of the coding process, themes that described the slow fashion
consumer’s profile and buying insights emerged and were used later to create a narrative of
the slow fashion buyer persona.

Conclusion:
In order to expand knowledge of slow fashion brand customer, a persona that communicates
the characteristics and aspects that influence purchase decisions of slow fashion buyer was
developed with this study. To answer the research questions and develop persona, five female
slow fashion brand buyers were interviewed. Answering the research questions provided 8
different themes that emerged from the interview transcripts and made up slow fashion brand
buyer persona, which fulfilled the purpose. The emerged themes were describing who slow
fashion brand buyer persona is: 1) creative mind; 2) globetrotter and explorer; 3)fond of
nature, and themes that described what influences the slow fashion buyer: 4) consciousness;
5) quality over quantity; 6)shoppers of small boutiques; 7)trust; 8) esthetics.

This study did not come to a firm conclusion, but rather aimed to provide more in-depth
knowledge about slow fashion brand buyer and point out implications to further study the
slow fashion consumer.

Keywords: slow fashion, slow movement, buyer persona, marketing persona, consumer
behavior, slow fashion consumer, slow fashion communication
Table of contents
1. Introduction .........................................................................................................................................1
1.1. Background ..................................................................................................................................1
1.2. Problem statement .......................................................................................................................3
1.3. Purpose and research questions ...................................................................................................3
1.4 Delimitations ..................................................................................................................................4
2. Literature Review................................................................................................................................5
2.1 Mass consumption society .............................................................................................................5
2.2 Slow fashion ..................................................................................................................................6
2.3 Slow fashion consumer ..................................................................................................................8
2.3.1 LOHAS - Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability ..........................................................................................10
2.4 Social media ................................................................................................................................. 10
3. Theory .................................................................................................................................................11
3.1 Definition of persona ...................................................................................................................13
3.2 Defining a market......................................................................................................................... 14
3.3 Practitioners guide to persona creation ........................................................................................15
4. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 18
4.1 Research design and method ........................................................................................................18
4.2 Sample selection ..........................................................................................................................19
4.3 Data collection procedure ............................................................................................................21
4.4 Data analysis ................................................................................................................................23
4.5 Evaluation of research quality......................................................................................................25
4.6 Limitations ...................................................................................................................................26
4.7 Ethical considerations ..................................................................................................................26
5. Findings and analysis ......................................................................................................................... 26
5.1 Themes that describe who is the slow fashion brand customer ...................................................27
5.1.1 Creative mind .................................................................................................................................................27
5.1.2 Globetrotter and explorer ...............................................................................................................................28
5.1.3 Fondness of nature .........................................................................................................................................29
5.2 Themes that describe what influences slow fashion brand customer’s decision making ............30
5.2.1 Conscious consumer ......................................................................................................................................30
5.2.2 Preferring quality to quantity .........................................................................................................................32
5.2.3 Shoppers of small boutiques .........................................................................................................................33
5.2.4 Gain their trust to win them over ..................................................................................................................34
5.2.5 ”It's important that you are attracting those kinds of people just looking for beauty. " .................................35
6. Discussion ..........................................................................................................................................38
6.1 Slow fashion consumer profile - an answer to RQ 1 ...................................................................38
6.2 Buying Insights - an answer to RQ 2 ...........................................................................................40
7. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................41
7.1 Research limitations and future research ..................................................................................... 42
8. References ..........................................................................................................................................43
9.0 Appendix ..........................................................................................................................................49
1. Introduction
1.1. Background

Globalisation of the fashion industry has a significant effect on the environment and people.
Next to oil, fashion takes the second place as the most environment polluting industry (Conca,
2015). This has been triggered by the quantity oriented fast fashion sector which currently
dominates the business (Fletcher, 2010). The success of fast fashion companies lies in the
ability to respond to consumers’ needs when and as they arise, while maintaining low prices
of trendy garments (Ghemawat and Nueno, 2003). Fast changing trends and low prices of fast
fashion clothing has created a consumer culture where garments have no significant value.
Garments are most likely discarded after being worn a few times or not at all, which is
considered as a waste of resources (LeBlanc, 2012).

Fast fashion is mass produced, which means that the garments are designed to be produced
quickly and in large quantities. However, processes from fibre growing to fabric and apparel
manufacturing take as long as with any other garment production. Producing large quantities
of fast fashion consumes massive amounts of water, energy and toxic chemicals, that all affect
the environment and climate change (Fletcher, 2010). Besides using a lot of natural resources,
the price of the garment is also kept low by using low-cost labour. A lot of production has
been transferred to countries where labour cost is low and no significant attention has been
paid to working conditions or the age of the workers (Fletcher, 2010). Therefore, the ability to
face consumer's evolving need for novelty and trendiness comes from exploiting natural and
labour resources (Fletcher, 2010).

However, the dominance of fast fashion has grown interest in slow fashion, which emphasises
on quality through slower production and consumption cycle. The slow movement stresses on
sustainable living with taking into consideration production and consumption of goods (Clark,
2008). Slow fashion represents different approach where designers, buyers, retailers and
consumers are educated on where their products are coming from and the impact it has on
workers, as well as ecosystems (Fletcher 20010, Ertekin and Atik, 2014). It prioritises
timeless design over following trends. Quality of the products is provided by using quality
materials and producing locally in small quantities. This together with transparency of the
supply chain makes consumers perceive more value and trust in what they pay for, eventually
keeping the garment longer and taking good care of it (Fletcher, 2010).

Watson and Yan (2013) have defined slow fashion consumer as one who chooses to purchase
high quality, versatile clothing that allows them to build a wardrobe based on the concept of
clothing created out of care and consideration. They also describe the slow fashion customer
as a consumer who seeks more classic and timeless styles, as well as expects longer life span
out of it. With these requirements, slow fashion customers are expecting to pay more for a
quality garment in contrast to fast fashion customer, who desire to buy multiple clothing
pieces for the same amount. Trend forecasting and analytics company World Global Style
Network (WGSN) brings out in their "Future consumer 2018" report that more people are
making conscious decisions, meaning that consumers are paying more attention to the quality,
style and long-lasting design of the garment. According to the report, 38% of American adults
believe green products and services are the new standard and required expectation for
consumers (WGSN(a), 2015).

Henninger, et al. (2016), as a result of their study, state that communication has a major role
in spreading the sustainable fashion and its importance. People are nowadays exposed to
information sharing and advertisements more than ever due to the social and digital media
emergence. Social media gives companies the ability to easily promote their content to a
specific target group. This allows brands to provide information that their customers want and
expect, making it one of the most powerful tools influencing customer decision. This,
however, requires an understanding of company’s target market and consumer group. Long-
time fashion brand consultant Karen Harvey states that fashion companies should think more
like tech companies (Segran, 2017). In the past, people looked at fashion designers for
inspiration what to wear, whereas currently the consumers dictate their wants and companies
respond. She further states that consumer-centric technology companies have changed the
way people relate to brands. Many fashion companies are still creating aspirational lifestyle
and assume that if the consumer wants to be part of that they will simply follow the brand,
though brands that will thrive are the ones that focus on understanding their consumers and
meeting them where they are (Segran, 2017).

Therefore, communicating desirable content to the right target group requires knowing your
audience. One of the ways to gain the knowledge is to create a persona that communicates the
characteristics and aspects that influence a group of customers (Scott, 2015, pp190).
Marketing and sales platform HubSpot defines persona as a semi-fictional character of an
ideal customer. It is built based on market research and real customer data describing the
buyer and the buying decision process of the consumer (Kusinitz, 2014). The importance of
knowing the consumer to market commodities was already considered in the 20th century.
Daniel T. Cook investigates in his study "The Rise of "The Toddler" as Subject and as
Merchandising Category in the 1930s" (2000), how the commercial personas of "the child"
and "the mother" were rhetorically, visually, and symbolically created to market consumer
goods. Commercial personas are set up with assemblages of characteristics (Cook, 2000). To
give a customer what they want requires a product that somewhere or somehow proffers a
model of a customer of this garment. The persona profiles are used to satisfy the needs of the
broader range of people that the persona represents (Goodwin, 2011, pp.11). The customer has
specific priorities, concerns, abilities, wants, needs and motivations. Cook (2000, pp.113) has
written: "A commercial persona consists of both statements and images that together give
shape to these imputed characteristics." The aim of the persona creation is to create a direct
representation of a customer group that shares similar values, goals and a set of behavioural
patterns (Goodwin, 2011, pp.11). Personas are created with the help of interviews,
observation and market research process. They are fictional and representative of a target
consumer, which helps make decisions related to design, communication or marketing
strategy (Goodwin, 2011, pp.11). The description of persona, using demographic and
psychographic data, creates the buyer profile of the buyer persona, where buying decision-
making process is described through buying insights. Knowing consumer’s exact likes,
interests, activities and media preferences gives marketers the opportunity and ability to
create content that speaks to the customer, which is an important part of building a successful
marketing and PR plan (Scott, 2015, pp190).

1.2. Problem statement

After the II World War mass consumption society emerged, where people’s desires were
fulfilled with mass production and further fuelled by mass communication (Barber and Lobel,
1952). The mass consumption resulted in the emergence of fast fashion industry that has its
negative effects on environment and on people. However, there is an increasing interest by
consumers in sustainability and ethical consumption, which has resulted in slow fashion
movement emergence (Fletcher, 2010). However, there is still little to know about the slow
fashion consumer (Pookulangara & Shephard, 2012). Previous studies on the subject have
investigated people’s perception about slow fashion, not looking into the actual consumers of
slow fashion (Watson and Yan, 2013; Pookulangara and Shephard, 2012; Jung and Jin, 2014).
Providing in-depth knowledge about the slow fashion brand customers can be of great benefit
for slow fashion companies. Knowing their customers gives companies the valuable
foundation to create successful marketing and communication strategies, which help them
strive in today’s market (Hooley and Saunders, 1993; Baines, 2013). Since slow fashion
concept promotes slow culture and values in fashion, providing in depth information
regarding its customers would benefit the fashion industry to contribute to more sustainable
approach. Also insights to future research on the slow fashion buyer concept as well persona
concept could be used from this study.

1.3. Purpose and research questions

The purpose of this thesis is to expand knowledge of female slow fashion brand customer by
creating a persona that communicates the characteristics and aspects that influence purchase
decisions of slow fashion consumers.
To achieve the previously mentioned purpose, the study has two research questions:
1. How can the current slow fashion brand consumer’s profile be described?
2. What influences the slow fashion brand consumer’s buying process?
1.4 Delimitations

The study goes through persona development procedure, where slow fashion brand customer
personas are created with and aim to communicate the characteristics and aspects that
influence purchase decisions of slow fashion customers. In order to study slow fashion
customers, a brand, that defines itself as slow fashion brand and through its practices can be
counted as slow fashion brand, was chosen. Also, the slow fashion brand was chosen because
of previous experience in the company during field study project and their allowance to study
their customers. Furthermore, the study does not intend to explain how the personas are used,
but introduce the persona creation background and how they are constructed. Also, since the
slow fashion brand, contributing to this study, is a women’s wear brand, all the customers
participating in this study are female.
2. Literature Review

A literature review of this thesis gives an overview of the subjects of the mass consumption
society, slow fashion, slow fashion consumer and social media. The mentioned topics are
presented to establish a foundation of knowledge to understand further developments of this
thesis. The information provided in this paragraph is mainly gathered from academic
journals. However, since slow fashion concept is rather new, also information sources like
trend forecasting company reports, books and essays of slow movement activists were used.

2.1 Mass consumption society

As productivity improved among industries after the II World War, consumer goods became
more affordable to constantly increasing number of households (Matsuyama, 2002). This
expanded the range of goods households consumed, generated larger markets for consumer
goods in general, which in turn resulted in further improvements in productivity (Matsuyama,
2002). Therefore, mass consumption society is a society where the majority oh households
enjoy consuming and constantly expanding their range of consumer goods (Matsuyama,
2002). Mass consumption of different consumer goods, as well in women's fashion, can be
seen as a cause as well as an effect of mass production (Barber and Lobel, 1952). Mass
production made consumer goods available for all social class levels. However, mass
production should not be seen as an independent cause for mass production. Class structures
and a desire to stay “in fashion”, has encouraged the fashion industry to develop in order to
satisfy the needs of its consumers (Barber and Lobel, 1952).

Thorstein Veblen, an economist and sociologist, coined a term “conspicuous consumption”

which means that consumers, besides fulfilling their own needs, are consuming certain goods
and services to publicly display their economic power and status (Veblen, 1899). Veblen’s
theory is based on the evolution of a leisure class, also known as upper class, or people who
are living in surplus that is provided to them by a working class (Trigg, 2001). According to
his theory, low class consumers interpret the consumption patterns of other consumers
situated at higher point in the hierarchy (Trigg, 2001). This can also be seen in the theory of
fashion as emulation, which is supported by Veblen (1953) and Simmel (1971). According to
emulation theory, also known as trickle-down theory, leisure class, known as upper class,
were always admired of their style and life by the working class, also known as lower class.
Therefore the lower classes, in order to move to higher class, tried to imitate the upper classes
style, and fashion therefore “trickles down”. In order to still appear as a higher class, led the
higher class people to follow as well invent new fashion trends (Entwistle 2015).

Consumer goods play a strong psychological role for people. Constructing, expressing and
maintaining a sense of identity is central why material possessions are so important to people
(Dittmar, 2008). The value of the good can be perceived by the social status it symbolises
(Dittmar, 2008). After lower classes adoption of the style of higher classes, fashion items lost
quickly their value, causing shift changes in fashion (LeBlanc, 2012; Entwistle 2015).
Meaning, that even though the item was still in a good shape for using, they were not used,
because they were out of fashion for the higher class. This pursuit of novelty caused higher
consumer demands, being a starting point for mass production and which was in turn further
fuelled by mass communication (Sheth, et al., 2000).

In today’s world, what is “fashionable”, “trendy” and “hip” has to be different from the
mainstream. Once the style has become mainstream, meaning that it has become widely
adopted, it is no longer different and therefore no longer fashionable or trendy (Entwistle,
2015). When in the past, trends were set by the upper class people, nowadays the trends are
coming from the streets and youth subcultures. Once copied universally, a trendsetting group
will move on to adopt another style. Today, this process is commercialised and trends are
changing in speed that have not been seen before, having often not a positive effect on
designers, fashion buyers, journalists and the environment (Entwistle 2015).

The development of mass production has brought us to fast fashion business model, also
known as “throw away” fashion, where the clothes have low prices, assortment of clothes
changes after a short period of time, which is possible as a result of short lead time and an
efficient supply chain (Byun and Sternquist, 2008). As stated in the background of this study,
fast fashion is mass produced, which means that the garments are designed to be produced
quickly and in large quantities (Fletcher, 2010). The ability to face consumer's evolving need
for novelty and being trendy comes from exploiting natural and labour resources (Fletcher,
2010).

2.2 Slow fashion

Against cheap, quantity oriented fast fashion approach, a movement that promotes slow
culture and values in fashion has emerged (Fletcher, 2010). In Milan in 2006 at the "Slow
Design" symposium the "Slow Design Manifesto" was presented. It describes the slow
approach of creating clothes which give time to produce, appreciate and cultivate quality
(Ertekin and Atik, 2014). “Slow Fashion” as a term was first coined by Kate Fletcher from
Centre for Sustainable Fashion (UK) in 2007, who borrows the term from the aforementioned
Slow Food Movement (Ertekin and Atik, 2014). Many designers have taken now slow and
more sustainable approach to designing and making clothes. Fletcher (2007) states that Slow
fashion does not mean only slowing down the consumption and production processes, but also
protecting the well-being of workers, communities and the environment as well a shift in
consumers' mindsets from quantity to quality (Clark 2008; Fletcher 2007).

Slow fashion is a vision of the fashion sector built from a different starting point (Fletcher,
2010). There is a different view of the world with distinct economic logic and business
models, not to mention values and processes, between slow and fast fashion (Fletcher, 2010).
Slow fashion movement emphasises on a balanced approach to fashion production, which
promotes long-term relationships with suppliers, raises local production, and focuses on
transparency (Ertekin and Atik, 2014). In slow fashion, the consumer is included in the supply
chain as co-producer since the movement emphasises on interactions and stronger bonds
between designers, producers, garments and users (Fletcher 2007; Ertekin and Atik, 2014).

The slow fashion brands implement sustainable, environmental and ethical practices into their
design and select production methods that emphasise quality and craftsmanship of production,
rather than quantity and pace. Also, the brands are making an effort to educate consumers so
they could make informed and conscious decisions when choosing an apparel (Figure 1)
(Pookulangara and Shephard, 2013).

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Figure 1. Framework model for the slow fashion process (Pookulangara and Shephard, 2013).

Jung and Jin (2014) in their study "Theoretical investigation to slow fashion", developed
Consumer Orientation to Slow Fashion scale by identifying slow fashion's dimensions to
understand the concept. As a result of analysing the open ended surveys, five dimensions of
slow fashion orientation were identified: equity, authenticity, functionality, localism and
exclusivity (Table 1).

Slow fashion orientation What it means

Equity Slow fashion products should be equally assessable to

everyone through fair trade (Jung and Jin, 2014). Producers of
the garments/fabrics should be respected meaning that they
should be freed from excessive workload and be provided with
better working conditions in the production system. Also,
compensation for their work should be according to their
contribution (Jung and Jin, 2014).
 Authenticity Emphasises on the highly skilled and craft based production.
Localism Support of local businesses and using local resources, as well
preferring domestic brands to global apparel brands.

Exclusivity Producing in small quantities which make the products more

unique and diverse.

Functionality This dimension is closely related to post-purchase stage. The

study found that people buy high quality and wear it longer,
more often and in multiple ways.
Table 1: Five dimensions of slow fashion orientation (Jung and Jin, 2014).

2.3 Slow fashion consumer

There is an increasing interest by consumers in sustainability. Trend forecasting and analytics

company World Global Style Network(WGSN) brings out in their "Future consumer 2018"
report that more people are making conscious decisions which mean that they are paying
more attention to the quality, style and long lasting design of the garment (WGSN, 2015).
According to the report, 38% of American adults believe green products and services are the
new standard and required expectation for consumers.

In an article from the New York Times, trend experts and style leaders indicate that trends are
losing their influence. Thanks to the Internet, consumers have access to different information
regarding style that instead of imitating the trends, they have started to interpret and have
confidence in their own tastes. This has indicated a possibility that consumers will start
demanding higher quality items which have more individuality (LeBlanc, 2012). Moreover,
one of the world's most famous trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort believes that this is the end
of a system called fashion, and it will be taken over by the economy of clothes. She states that
people are now concentrating on clothes which as a result brings back couture (high-end
fashion that is constructed by hand). Edelkoort predicts that the comeback will also bring new
ideas how to handle the clothes (Fairs, 2015).

Watson and Yan (2013) in their research "An exploratory study of the decision processes of
fast versus slow fashion consumers" stress that slow fashion and fast fashion consumers differ
from each other with the view of the self image. Opposite to trend following fast fashion
consumers, slow fashion consumers align their self image with their style through their
clothing purchase (Watson and Yan, 2013). The results of the study indicate that consumers
use slow fashion clothing because of its high quality and versatile nature (Watson and Yan,
2013). This also confirms the slow fashion philosophy emphasises on creating timeless pieces
that embrace the simplicity of form, and focus on detail (Zoica Matei, 2009; Watson and Yan,
2013). Also, Jung and Jin (2014) confirmed the finding from their literature review that the
slow fashion consumers care about buying garments which they can wear for long period of
time, and which are not driven by fashion trends (Jung and Jin, 2014).

Pookulangara and Shephard (2012) from the University of North Texas conducted an
exploratory study where they analysed consumers' perception of purchasing slow fashion
garments. Seven focus groups with total 50 participants were interviewed. The participants of
the study were undergraduate students with an average age range of 18-25 years with most of
them pursuing a merchandising major. The questions asked of the participants were aiming to
gain insight into the topics of defining slow fashion, beliefs about slow fashion, slow fashion
attributes, slow fashion consumption behaviour and influence of slow fashion on the retail
industry.

Four themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews. The first topic was slow fashion
defined. Here, the participants, without knowing the slow fashion concept, described slow
fashion as the opposite of fast fashion. After introducing the slow fashion concept, the
responses changed to defining it as fashion, which never goes out of style and it is made with
care and precision. They also indicated that it took time and care to produce slow fashion
garments. Some considered pieces that were handed down to them from their parents and
grandparents as slow fashion since the garment presents a greater value that comes from the
shared history with family members. This supports the idea of slow fashion garments as being
intended to be worn for a longer period of time (Pookulangara & Shephard, 2012).

The second theme that emerged was slow fashion product attributes, where all the participants
agreed that slow fashion products were quality products with a higher price than regular
merchandise, and would be classic rather than trendy (Pookulangara & Shephard, 2012). The
third theme was slow fashion as a lifestyle, where the participants agreed that they would like
to follow the lifestyle, but the biggest hindrance is economic considerations (Pookulangara &
Shephard, 2012).

The last, fourth theme, was slow fashion into the retail mainstream. Few of the participants
indicated that slow fashion was more for their parents’ generation, whereas fast fashion was
more appropriated for their generation (Pookulangara & Shephard, 2012). Others indicated
that due to the increased focus on sustainability and ethical consumerism, the slow fashion
movement is here to stay and will slowly gain popularity worldwide (Pookulangara &
Shephard, 2012). Participants agreed that the slow fashion concept has a probability of
becoming a highly successful phenomenon (Pookulangara & Shephard, 2012). For this to
happen, retailers and manufacturers should market their products more aggressively
(Pookulangara & Shephard, 2012). As well put some effort educating their customers about
the benefits one contributes with buying slow fashion products. Consumers' demand for slow
fashion depends on knowledge and understanding of issues that the fashion world is facing
(Moisander et al., 2010). Interviews of the study by Pookulangara and Shephard (2012)
indicated that consumers currently do not hold enough awareness of slow fashion to make
purchase decisions.

2.3.1 LOHAS - Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability

LOHAS, the Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability, has also been titled as "Value-Driven
Consumers" or "Conscious Capitalism" (Aburdene 2007, Heim 2011). The term LOHAS for
consumer group was introduced by Natural Market Institute (NMI). LOHAS differ from other
consumer groups with putting health and sustainability in the centre of their life (Heim, 2011).
This megatrend has been growing during the last 20 years. Marketing experts find that
LOHAS is a promising group of consumers that are opening up markets worth of billion of
US dollars.

Even though there is no clear socio-demographic group, that can be considered as LOHAS,
they share certain characteristics (Heim, 2011). For example, LOHAS mainly live in urban
areas (Willer and Kilcher, 2009 p.168). The professional service firm Ernst & Young found in
their study that LOHAS are thinking a lot about how their lifestyle affects other people as
well as the environment, while not only thinking about their benefits (Ernst & Young, 2008,
p1). LOHAS lifestyle also means that the consumers are in favour of technical developments
and are still enjoying the nature. They live self-centered life, but are still thinking about others
and are realistic but at the same time open to spiritual ideas (Ray and Anderson, 2000).

One important part of LOHAS is that they do not only act on the consumer side but also want
to be part of the production process. Therefore they are so called "co-producers" by steering
the producers to more sustainable production processes and products in general (Emerich,
2000, p.1; Paulesich, 2008, p. 154). Many LOHAS, as activists, believe that they can change
the production to more sustainable by favouring some products and boycotting others (Willer
and Kilcher, 2009 p.168).

2.4 Social media

Social media is considered to be one of the most influential innovations in the twenty-first
century. It is a powerful source for companies to promote themselves to their target market as
well for consumers to share their generated content and express their opinion (Zolkepli and
Kamarulzaman 2015; Strähle and Gräff, 2017). The most known and influential social media
tools are social networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. These
social networks connect people with similar interests and backgrounds who upload user
generated information. Companies use social networks to promote their content to specific
target groups (Ka-Yan Ng et al. 2015 ). Since there is a higher chance for images to be shared
than text information, visual social networks like Instagram or Snapchat have become more
popular than other before mentioned networks (Strähle and Gräff, 2017).
Social media gives companies ability to communicate with their target market directly when
traditional media publishes information to the masses without direct consumer reaction
(Reilly and Hynan, 2014). To successfully communicate with their target consumers,
companies need to have a great understanding of their consumers. Getting to know your
audience gives an ability to create compelling and targeted web content to reach them (Scott,
2015, pp 181). One way to do it is to create personas, which creation will be discussed more
in the theory paragraph. Persona is a representative of a particular type of consumer that is
interested in the products or services a company provides. American online marketing
strategist and author of several marketing related book David Meerman Scott states that
building a personas is first and most important step in creating a successful marketing and PR
plan (Scott, 2015, pp 183). Usually, a typical press release or social media posts are conducted
on what the company wants to say to the buyer rather than what the buyer wants to hear.
Doing research on the customer and creating a buyer persona which includes getting to know
their interests, goals, problems, media they consume and the language they use gives an
insight to a marketer to create content that speaks to the buyer (Scott, 2015, pp190).





3. Theory

Theory chapter of this thesis presents the persona creation theory. The concept of persona
personas developed from the fields of practice, therefore there has not been many scientific
articles written about the theoretical background of the persona method (Nielsen, 2004).
Following is presented literature from various persona concept practitioners and also
emergence of the concept is presented, as well its connection to fields like marketing.

Traditional marketing is based on the broadcast model of communication where an

organisation decides a message that will persuade targets to purchase their products, also
known as push strategy (Barlow-Busch, 2006; Charan, 2015). The message then is delivered
to target markets through different marketing channels repeatedly. With his Theory of the
Leisure Class (1899) study, Thorstein Veblen predicted the role of modern advertising by
analysing the self-advertisement of the leisure class (Tilman, 2006). Also Veblen believed that
consumers could be persuaded to buy goods or services they don’t need by putting money on
advertising and salesmanship (Tilman, 2006). The traditional model was successful during
World War II where the rising desire for consumption generated consumer demand, which
was satisfied by mass production and fuelled with mass communication (Barlow-Busch,
2006). Until this day, the concept of goods is used by advertising professionals as bridges to
displace meaning. This is also one of the engines of consumption in modern society
(McCracken, 1988; Ertekin and Atik, 2014). Through advertising, idealised images are
presented of how people should look like, act like, or what they should want to own and what
kind of lifestyle they should aspire (Arnould and Thompson, 2005, p. 875).
Over time, people’s cultural values have shifted, and easier access to information have made
people more skeptic about advertisements (Barlow-Busch, 2006). Marketing has changed
from advertising and selling to actually satisfying customer needs. As a leading management
thinker Peter Drucker has stated “The aim of marketing is to make selling super fluorous. The
aim is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits … and
sells itself” (Drucker, 1973; Kotler, et al., 2005). Today’s marketing role is to engage with the
customers because customers are the ones now who own the relationship with companies and
decide who they want to engage with. When traditional offline marketing works with push
strategy, where the products are pushed to customers by advertisements to make a purchase,
today, specially on the web, pull strategy is needed to attract customers by serving useful,
relevant and interesting information (Charan, 2015).

The Internet has changed how people communicate and interact with each other. It has also
changed how companies communicate with their already existing and potential customers.
Gone are the days, where marketing was possible for only big companies with high marketing
budgets. Now, interactive media marketing, also known as digital marketing (Parsons, et al.,
1998) is offering great and cost efficient opportunities for all the companies to interact with
their customers directly (Scott, 2015). The exchange process in the Internet age has become
more customer initiated and customer controlled. People who use the Internet, place greater
value on information and tend to respond negatively to messages aimed only at selling.
Traditional marketing targets a somewhat passive audience. In contrast, e-marketing targets
people who actively select which websites they will visit and what marketing information
they will receive about which products and under what conditions (Kotler, et al., 2005, pp
138).

The exploding use of social media in the past years, have grown a desire for consumers to
express their fashion choices (McKinsey&Company, 2017). Consumers prefer brands that
share similar values with them which makes them seek for authenticity from fashion
companies that they engage with. To face the consumer needs for authenticity and
individuality, companies will start to deliver personalisation to consumers through curated
recommendations, communications and storytelling that connects individuals
(McKinsey&Company, 2017). Personalisation customises the user’s interaction by providing
content to the user that is relevant to her. The aim is to provide the right content, to the right
person at the right time (Charan, 2015. pp.415). Providing personalised user experience that
online media can offer, is a key advantage on offline media (Charan, 2015. pp.415).

To successfully communicate with consumers, companies need to have a great understanding

of their target audience (Giddings, 2010). Getting to know your audience gives an ability to
create compelling and targeted content to reach them (Scott, 2015, pp 181). One way to learn
customers is through personas. Persona is a representative of a particular type of consumer
that is interested in the products or services a company provides.
3.1 Definition of persona

“Personas are archetypal users who embody the goals and aspirations of real users in an easy-
to-assimilate and personable form (Haines & Mitchell, 2014).” Personas are not real existing
people, they are character profiles that represent a group of actual consumers (Brigham,
2013). Personas are data-based, meaning that they are constructed from data that is gathered
through user research, which treat the user as a particular person with emotions, actions and
needs (Madsen & Nielsen, 2009). Personas are given names, personal details, behavioural
patterns, goals, skills, attitudes and sometimes a picture to make them more realistic.

The concept of persona is widely used by user research practitioners, who have developed
processes and practices in the area over several years (Cooper, 1999; Grudin, and Pruitt, 2002;
Pruitt and Adlin, 2006; Dong, et al., 2007). The method has also been applied to other
research areas such as needs analysis, task analysis and market research (Dong, et al., 2007)
and is widely used in relation to the design of user experiences for digital products and
services (Haines & Mitchell, 2014). Various literature credit Alan Cooper to use persona
concept for the first time as a practical communication and design tool for computer software
in the 1980s (Brigham, 2013, Nielsen, 2004). Hains and Mitchell state in their study “Cooper
(1999) recognized that software developers often had a poor understanding of the intended
users for their products and would make design decisions based on unfounded assumptions
about people’s preferences and skills or would revert to making decisions based on people
like themselves” (Haines, & Mitchell,2014). Presenting a persona to design team helped to
build a shared understanding of who is the end consumer and the product should be designed
for. Cooper’s book “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum” brought the persona concept to
masses, which resulted in more development and practices in the field by companies like IBM
and Microsoft (Brigham, 2013).

Personas are widely used because they communicate essential and helpful information that the
data contains to all the participants in a project (Nielsen, 2012). They give a deeper
understanding of a customer beyond what comes from the traditional quantitative market
research methods (Barlow-Busch, 2006). They provide information regarding what they do
and why they do it, not simply who they are (Giddings, 2010). Personas expose target
customers and ways how to connect with them. They also help determine the preferences of
their customers which in turn shape the development of certain products, services, events and
even tone and manner of marketing messages (Giddings, 2010). Since personas present
personal characteristics which makes them encourage empathy and more engaging than other
representations of user data (Dorst & Cross, 2001). There are more and more companies using
personas to market products or services to their customers including Apple, Ford, Zipcar,
Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, et cetera (Brigham, 2013).
3.2 Defining a market

Before the persona concept became widely used by practitioners in user experience and also
marketing field, the consumers were studied in more traditional way. Various advertising,
marketing and media articles’ author and professor Jack Z. Sissors’ article “What Is a
Market?” (1966) is considered to be one of the classics that introduced the concept of user
representations to the world of business (Anon, 2006). In his article, Sissors discusses that in
order to have a successful product and sales, it is important to know who you are selling to
(Sissors, 1966; Anon, 2006). This has been used by many practitioners as a foundation to
creating a specific representations of target customers (Anon, 2006).

In his article, Sissors introduced different ways of how to look at markets. The researcher
presented an overall view of the term stating that “It is many things related to selling products
which meet consumers’ needs and wants” (Sissors, 1966). The author explained that a
common way the market was usually identified, was with a generic class of products. Also
known as product markets, that are referring to people who have purchased a given class of
products, for example apparel market, cigarette market or beer market. The product
identification of a market conveys an assumption that the people who will buy a product in
the future will be very much like those who have purchased it in the past. According to
Sissors, this assumption is usually valid, because purchasers are likely to buy the same
product in the future if their wants and needs have been satisfied (Sissors, 1966).

Going further from generic class, the market could also be defined more precisely with a
subclass of a product. For example a beer market is often identified by certain kind of beers.
The subclass in turn may be identified by a brand name. The purchasers of the market can be
described in various ways. Most commonly the market can be outlined by the size of the
market, geographical locations of purchasers, demographical descriptions of purchasers,
describing more precisely who is the purchaser, or by social-psychological characteristics,
outlining how purchasers differ from non-purchasers. Also, reasons why products are
purchased, who makes the actual purchases and who influences the purchaser, when
purchases are made, and how purchasing is done are ways to describe the market (Sissors,
1966).

After the market is identified and groups described, the market of potential customers can be
divided into groups or segments based on different characteristics. This process is called
market segmentation. The segments are usually defined by socio-demographic and
psychographic variables. Socio-demographic variables are age, gender, income, location and
typical psychographic variables include activities, needs, values and personality (Haines &
Mitchell, 2014). Therefore, market segmentation is used to identify consumer groups who
will be interested in similar products, services or marketing campaigns (Haines & Mitchell,
2014).
Segmentation and personas answer different information needs and should be viewed as
complementary tools (Brechin, 2008 ;Haines & Mitchell, 2014). When segmentation provides
valuable demographic and psychographic information about people in the market segment, it
doesn’t capture the difference how people use things or what made the customer make a
purchase. Nowadays, how the products are used doesn’t only concern design department of
the company, but also provides valuable information for sales and marketing department
(Barlow-Busch, 2006). Personas are a form of segmentation, they are dividing market
according to what are people’s behaviours and needs. In design persona concept, the
behaviours, goals and needs are identified in a context of a certain product. In marketing, the
persona concept is concerned with predicting behaviours in the context of purchasing a
product. Design persona model and marketing persona model complement each other and
help to paint more clearer picture of the customer which in turn helps to create more
successful strategies for both design and marketing (Barlow-Busch, 2006).

3.3 Practitioners guide to persona creation

There can be different types of personas, depending on what is the goal for the persona. As
mentioned before, the method have been applied in various fields, with an aim to
communicate and give representations of users/customers, therefore there are different
approaches to creating one. Since the purpose of this thesis is to expand knowledge of slow
fashion brand customer by creating a persona that communicates the characteristics and
aspects that influence purchase decision of a slow fashion customer, in this thesis, I am using
a process that is adopted from Revella (2015) buyer persona concept and Pruitt and Adlin
(2006) marketing persona concept.

Marketing and buyer personas goal is the same, to reveal the purchase process and to
understand what factors influence peoples’s purchase decision. Buyer/marketing persona
helps marketers to think about their brand buyers as real people, with real concerns, goals and
families. Seeing the picture and knowing all the details of a buyer profile creates a sense of
the human connection. The most benefit of buyer persona get the marketers who find it easy
to imagine themselves making the decision they want to influence (Revella, 2015, pp. 11).

While creating marketing persona, there are two questions that are guiding the research:

- What is the purchase decision process? (How do people decide what product to purchase?)
- What needs or wants people have that would make a certain product desirable?
 Figure 2: Overview of persona development process

Pruitt and Adlin (2006) state that persona creation starts with family planning phase where the
reasons for persona creation are clarified and data for persona creation is gathered (Please
refer to Figure 2 for an overview of persona development process). To create good quality
personas, they should be based on qualitative research (Cooper, 1999). Qualitative research
method allows to study people more in-depth than quantitative methods and since personas
are created to tell a complete story and presents a richer model of customers (Barlow-Busch,
2006), qualitative research methods should be used.

Buyer personas evolve from authentic stories related by actual buyers (Revella, 2015, pp12).
The stories and data, that is used to create a persona, is most commonly gathered through
interviews with customers. The questions of the interview are conducted with an aim to get to
know the consumer with her own words, what is her lifestyle like, what are their interests,
goals, problems, media they consume as well to understand the customer's decision making
process and what influences it (Scott, 2015, 190; Revella, 2015, pp 10; Pruitt and Adlin,
2006).

But before the interviews are conducted, categories of consumers should be identified. Those
categories are usually defined as sets of characteristics that groups of users share (user
segments) (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). The categories could be identified through customer
research of data that already exists in the companies’ database (Revella, 2015). Use of
categories ensures that it would be able to express the information found in the clusters of
data as personas (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). Without categories, data would give interesting
information, but it would be difficult to use the information to create personas.

When the categories are defined and data gathered, it is time to analyse and organise the data
into structure of personas. In this phase, the data is summarised, clustered, and analysed in
order to discover themes (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). Also, during this phase, the number of
personas that needs to be created is established (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). When developing a
marketing persona, the decision of how many personas should be made, could be decided
based on the buying insights data of the interviewees (Revella, 2015, pp 114). Buying insights
reveal the differences in customers expectations and needs while making a purchase. If the
number of personas is set based on buyer profile, the consumers will be grouped based on
who they are, not what are their needs or expectations (Revella, 2015, pp 114). For example,
if real estate agents would show apartments only based on who people are, there would be
much higher chances of peoples expectations not be fulfilled. But when the agent knows what
are the needs of the person, she would be able to create a match between the needs of the
person and an apartment. Grouping together people who have similar expectations, actionable
guidance is provided about how to match companies solutions to their needs.

When the data is analysed, subcategories of customers will be identified based on before
established goal of personas (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). For example with marketing persona the
goal is to understand what factors influence peoples’s purchase decision. Therefore if from the
data processing appears that people in the same category have different expectations and
needs that influence their purchase decision, those customers are put in different sub
categories (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). The sub categories are marked with bulleted lists of
distinguishing data points and usually each sub category has one persona.
After identifying sub-categories the categories are prioritised. Marketing persona primary
persona is chosen based on who will have the greatest impact on company’s success in a
segment of the market (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006). In this study, the category of customers
participating in the study were female customers of slow fashion brand who had made a
purchase within the past three years (2014-2017). The primary persona of this study is
identified based on the data processed with coding method to identify themes that describe
aspects that influence customer’s buying decision making process. The themes are created
from the similar codes that most repeatedly emerged from the interviews transcriptions and
were giving information regarding purchase decision making process. Once the primary
persona’s buying insights are identified, the persona is finalised with providing profile data
that gives the persona personality and context in order it to come to life (Pruitt and Adlin,
2006).

Final persona consists of buyer profile and buyer insights. Buyer profile describes the
persona, using demographic and psychographic data (Revella, 2015, pp.10). Demographics
data that is used to build the buyer profile covers information like the age of the consumer, its
gender, occupation and level of education. Psychographic data, also known as information
regarding lifestyle, is gathered through analysis of consumer's activities, interests and
opinions. This gives an insight into consumer's lifestyle and patterns of behaviour that also
could affect consumer's buying behaviour and decision-making process. However, buyer
profile does not give the marketer an ability to think like the buyer but assume what the buyer
might think. Therefore, also buying insights, that describes the "when", "how" and "why"
aspects of customer's decision to make a purchase are revealed(Revella, 2015, pp12).


4. Methodology

The following chapter describes the research process and contains explanation of methods
that were used in this study to answer the previously specified research questions. The
paragraph starts with presenting the design and method of this study. Then goes through
sample selection process and description of the methods for the data collection. This
methodology part ends with specifying how the data was analysed. Also, reliability and
validity criteria are presented together with limitations of this study.

4.1 Research design and method

The purpose of this thesis is to expand knowledge of slow fashion brand customer by creating
a persona that communicates the characteristics and aspects that influence her purchase
decision. Since research method is defined by what the research purpose is (Silverman, 2005),
qualitative method was chosen for this study. Qualitative research aims to understand
customer's attitudes, values, behaviour, beliefs, experiences or interactions and this through
non-numerical data (Gibson et al., 2004). As mentioned previously, slow fashion consumer
concept is qualitatively unexplored area, therefore qualitative research strategy approach was
chosen for this thesis, with and aim to gather in-depth data about slow fashion brand
customer. Therefore quantitative research methods seemed not suitable for this since the topic
has to be discussed in-depth and statistical tools cannot provide those depths of expressions
(Jobber, 2010, pp.231).

As in the usual case with qualitative studies, the view on the relationship between theory and
research is an inductive approach where theory is generated out of the research (Bryman and
Bell, pp.386). However, like Bryman and Bell (2011) has stated: "To a large extent, deductive
and inductive strategies are possibly better thought of as tendencies rather than as a hard-and-
fast distinction", so it is with this study. The view between theory and research in this study is
not entirely inductive since the outcome of the study is a descriptive narrative of a slow
fashion brand buyer persona which can be seen as empirical generalisation rather than a
theory.

According to Bryman and Bell (2011, pp.40), a research design is a "framework for the
collection and analysis of data". It connects the empirical data to a study's initial research
questions and ultimately to its conclusions (Yin, 2009). To expand the knowledge of slow
fashion brand customer, two research questions have been formulated for this study. The first
question is in search of how the current slow fashion brand consumer’s profile be described?
Consumer profile constructs the part of persona which describes who is the slow fashion
brand customer persona. But in order to understand what are the expectations and needs while
purchasing, second research question is looking more into what influences the slow fashion
brand customer buying process.

This study’s aim is to discover rather than to confirm, which can be seen as nature of a case
study (Burns, 2000). American social scientist Robert K.Yin, who is known for his work on
case study research, states that case studies are preferred when the investigator has little
control over events and when the focus is on a contemporary phenomenon within some real-
life context (Yin, 2003, pp.1). To address the research questions of this study, a single case
study using representative case is going to be used. Single case study involves the detailed
and intensive analysis of a single case (Bryman and Bell, 2011, pp.59). Cases should be based
on the anticipation of the opportunity to learn (Bryman and Bell, 2011, pp.60), which in this
study is to learn more in depth about slow fashion brand customers. Representative or typical
case's objective is to capture the circumstances and conditions of an everyday or
commonplace situation (Yin, 2003, pp.41). The lessons learned from the case is assumed to be
informative about the experiences of the average person or institution (Yin, 2003, pp.41).
Within this study, case study represents a Swedish slow fashion company MASKA. The
empirical data is gathered through interviewing this one brand’s online consumers.

4.2 Sample selection

The sampling method for this study is purposive sampling. Purposive sampling is a non-
probability form of sampling, which means that the participants were not sampled on a
random basis (Bryman and Bell, 2011, pp.442). The purpose of purposive sampling is to
sample participants strategically so that the ones that are sampled are relevant to the research
questions being posed (Bryman and Bell, 2011, pp.442).

Therefore, to study slow fashion consumers, first, a company that follows slow fashion
philosophy was selected. Prior this study, I had a possibility to do my field study in a Sweden
based slow fashion company MASKA, who kindly accepted to participate in the study. The
brand emphasises offering female quality garments made of natural fibres that transcend
seasons and are produced in a sustainable and ethical way. Maska's sustainability efforts
include many dimensions. The brand does not only pay attention to the ethical and sustainable
way of garment production but also very carefully selects its yarns and fabrics used for the
products. They emphasise the importance of the lifecycle of the garment, choosing materials
that "age with grace and are long-lasting (MASKA, 2017)". The material choice is also made
keeping in mind the usage and washing of the garment by favouring materials that seldom
need laundering and require lower washing temperature (MASKA, 2017).
Part of persona development process is a step, where category of customers needs to be
identified based on defined characteristics that the group shares. In order to answer research
questions, empirical data was gathered from customers who belong in the category of slow
fashion brand customers (please refer to figure 3).

Figure 3: Define categories - first step of persona development process

This category group also represents sample group of this study. The sample group for this
study was put together of online consumers of MASKA, who are all females. The available
customers' data was examined, and sample group was put together of online customers who
had been making a purchase within the last three years (2014-2017). Also, customers with
more frequent purchases were preferred since they can be counted as loyal slow fashion brand
users. 120 emails to the customers were sent out with an invitation to participate in the in-
depth interview. Five respondents (Table 2) showed their interest in participating in the
interview and further information regarding the time and place as well the nature of the
interview with interview guide (Appendix 1) was provided to them via email. The participants
were promised to maintain their anonymity meaning that names of the participants is not
revealed. In table 2, short introduction of each interview participant is presented, showing
their nationality, occupation and age.
 Table 2. Slow fashion brand customers, who participated in the interviews.

4.3 Data collection procedure

One of the essential sources of case study information is the interview which will be guided
conversations rather than structures queries (Yin, 2003, pp.89). Since the research has an aim
to get a deeper understanding of female slow fashion consumers than the previous researchers
have stated, semi-structured interviews were conducted with online consumers of slow
fashion brand MASKA. Also, various personas development literature states that since
personas evolve from authentic stories that are related to customers, the data should be
gathered through interviews with customers (Scott, 2015, 190; Revella, 2015, pp 10; Pruitt
and Adlin, 2006). Data gathering is also a second step of persona development process. Please
refer to figure 4.

Figure 4: Data gathering - second step of persona development process

Semi-structured interview type was chosen among structured and unstructured interviews
since there is already some knowledge about the topics or issues under investigation, but
further details are still needed to build the slow fashion buyer persona (Wilson, 2013, pp.24).
A semi-structured interview is a combination of structured interview and unstructured
interview, meaning that throughout interview there will be asked predefined questions and
questions that arise during the interview, which increases the depth of the interview and the
discussion (Wilson, 2013, pp.24). Researchers who use semi-structured interviews to gather
data, follow a document called interview guide. Interview guide introduces the purpose and
topic of the interview and contains a list of interview questions on a fairly specific topic to be
covered (Wilson, 2013, pp. 24). In this study, interview guide consisted of a list of questions
on the themes related to demographics, psychographics and buying insight (Appendix 1). The
topics and interview questions were formed in relation to fulfill the purpose of this study,
which is to expand a knowledge of slow fashion brand customer by creating a persona that
communicates the characteristics and aspects that influence her purchase decisions. The
interview guide was not exposed to the interviewees beforehand with an aim to get answers
that first come to their mind and not being able to prepare answers that might not have given
reliable input. However, they were introduced to the topic as a thesis research on slow fashion
brand consumers in the email with an invitation to participate in the interview.

The interview with an online slow fashion consumer started with a request to the person to tell
me something about herself. During this question, the respondent usually covered all the
demographic and personal background related information, like what is her occupation, where
does she live, family status, education. Then followed psychographic related questions
relating to the activities and interests of the respondent. Here also emerged respondent's
opinions on different things like fashion, brands and clothes. The last topic was covering
questions related to buying behaviour where the respondent addressed her buying behaviour
and what does she value and assess during the decision making. Also, aspects that influence
the buying process came up. During the answering period, notes were taken to manage the
order of the questions or create new ones to get as much valuable information as possible.

Interviewees had an ability to answer every question the way she interpreted it and the
questions asked of the participants, did not follow exactly the order of the interview guide.
The interviews were rather a dialog than question-answer based interviews. Even though new
questions were emerging during the interview, the questions were asked with similar wording
from interviewee to interviewee. The interview process was rather flexible, and the emphasis
on the interview was to encourage the interviewee to reveal as much as possible about her
profile and buying insights.
The semi-structured interviews with slow fashion brand consumers were all conducted
between 12th of May and 12th of June. Since the researcher and interviewees were situated in
different countries, interviews were done through video chat software Skype. Accordign to
Bryman and Bell (2015, p.675) Skype interviews give more flexibility for example of the last
minute adjustments as well saves time and cost, specially when the interviewee and
interviewer are situated in different countries. Doing the interview through Skype also gave
the interviewee an ability to choose a place where she would feels most comfortable, which
most of the cases was a home environment. Participants were notified beforehand that the
interview might take an hour of their time, but every interview took approximately 45
minutes. All five interviews were entirely recorded with a permission of interviewee. After the
interview, the recording was transcribed.



4.4 Data analysis

Once the data is gathered for persona creation, it is time to analyse and organise the data into
structure of personas (Figure 5). The data analysis aim is to discover themes related to the
goal of the persona creation and establish how many personas needs to be created (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Data analysis step of the persona development process

The data was segmented and divide into meaningful units (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996, pp.
10). To analyse the qualitative content gathered through semi-structured interviews, a coding
approach was used in this thesis. Coding starts with reviewing the transcripts and giving
labels to parts of the text that seem to have a theoretical significance or to have an importance
in the social worlds of those being studied (Bryman and Bell, 2011, pp.578). Coding method
was chosen for analysing interview transcriptions of this study because it enables to
"recognise and re-contextualize data, allowing a fresh view of what is there through reading"
and rereading the transcriptions to make selections relatable to the phenomena (Coffey and
Atkinson, 1996, pp.46).

There is a significant difference between coding quantitative and qualitative data. Coding
quantitative data means more or less a way of managing the content whereas analysing
qualitative data through coding is more tentative and data analysis tends to be in a constant
state of potential revision and fluidity (Bryman and Bell, 2011, pp.578). In qualitative data, a
code is a word or a short phrase that represents a summative, prominent, essence-capturing
and evocative attribute for a part of language based data (Saldaña, 2013, pp 4). The coding in
this study was done with a help of Dedoose coding program. The process started with reading
through transcribed interviews one by one and marking parts of the texts as codes that seemed
accurate for answering the research question. Hence, transcription parts that gave any insight
into the buyer's demographic, psychographic or buying insight were seen as a valuable piece
of information.

All the transcribed interviews were coded with the help of a computer program Dedoose. The
program made coding and later code segmenting into themes easy to manage and
comprehend. Data display is considered to be a key element of the analysis process.
Presenting the data parts that relate to a particular code or category together gives the
researcher ability to explore the composition of each coded set more easily (Coffey and
Atkinson, 1996, pp.46). Interpretation of the set of codes which presented a certain theme was
used as the building parts of the persona in this study.

The coding process started after all the interviews were conducted and transcribed instead of
initiating the coding during the transcribing process. This mainly for a personal preference to
get a big picture of all the transcriptions together since the topics describing slow fashion
buyer persona emerged from similar codes across all the interviews. Since the purpose of this
thesis is to provide knowledge about who slow fashion brand customer is and what factors
influences her purchasing decisions, the data was coded looking for information that reflects
the profile of a customer and aspects that influence her purchase.
Codes that repeated were gathered into themes. The aim of the constructed persona is to
mainly communicate what aspects influence her purchase decision. If in the category of the
participants in this study have different expectations and needs that influence their purchase
decision, those customers information are put in sub categories. The sub-categories are
marked with bulleted lists of data points that distinguished them from the other sub-
categories. Then the sub-categories are prioritised based on who will have the greatest impact
on company’s success. In this study, only one persona, primary persona is created. The
primary persona of this study (slow fashion brand buyer persona) is the goal of this study and
she is identified based on the interview data processed with coding method to identify themes
that describe aspects that influence customer’s buying decision making process. The themes
are created from the similar codes that most repeatedly emerged from the interviews
transcriptions and were giving information regarding purchase decision making process. Once
the primary persona’s buying insights are identified, the persona is finalised with providing
profile data that gives the persona personality and context in order it to come to life (Pruitt
and Adlin, 2006).
4.5 Evaluation of research quality

Reliability and validity are important criteria evaluating a quality of the research (Bryman,
2015, pp.383). Reliability evaluates a degree to which a study can be replicated, which is
quite difficult criteria to meet in qualitative research (Bryman, 2015, pp.383. This because of
the change in social and consumer trends which can differ the answers of the interviewees
(Bryman, 2015, pp.383). However, to enable replicable analysis of the data, interviews were
recorded and later transcribed. Furthermore, to ensure the reliability of the study, it is
important to give as much information as possible about the research strategy and data
analysis methods of the study (Silverman, 2011, pp. 360). Research strategy and data analysis
method of this study is explained in detail in the methodology paragraph above. Also as
detailed information as possible of participants of the study is presented. Countries of where
the interviewees are from are presented in order to have a possibility to repeat the study with
the participants from the same area.

To ensure the trustworthiness of the conclusions that were generated in the research, validity
criteria is evaluated (Bryman, 2015, pp.384). In the study, the interviewees were customers of
a slow fashion brand which was confirmed by getting access to a slow fashion company's
online store's database, where the purchase details were seen and evaluated. Also the chosen
slow fashion brand's philosophy and actions matched with the theoretical proposition of the
slow fashion concept presented in the literature review. However, external validity, which
evaluates if the findings could be generalised across social settings is usually problematic for
qualitative research, because of their tendency to use case studies and small samples. As it is
with this thesis. Using case study method with rather small sample group makes it difficult to
generalise the findings across social settings (Bryman, 2015, pp.383). However, companies
with similar values and customers from the same countries could apply the knowledge while
making a marketing strategy.

Credibility evaluation refers to show if the researcher has understood the topic related to the
study (Bryman, 2015, pp.385). To provide credibility of this study, researcher thoroughly
studied the topic by reading relevant literature and previous studies. Another way to ensure
credibility, is through triangulation process which refers to using more than one method or
sources of data in the study (Bryman, 2015, pp.385). Within this study, triangulation is not
apparent since data from previous literature and data from conducted interviews were used.

The concept of confirmability evaluates if the findings of study are based on the research
participants’ narratives and words rather than researcher biases. In this study, the
interpretations made during research, were based on data. Often the data was illustrated by
using quotation from the interviews which represent actual words the participant had said and
shows the truth status of a respondent's account (Silverman, 2011, pp. 369).
4.6 Limitations

Certain limitations were set during the research process. To gather data for the research
process, there was made an agreement with a slow fashion brand MASKA that they allow to
send an invitation email to 120 of their customer who had purchased within the past three
years (2014-2017) from their online store. From those 120 customers, 5 agreed to participate
in the interview. Therefore the slow fashion persona created in this study could be used by
companies similar to MASKA, for example offering similar style as the brand.

4.7 Ethical considerations

Current study’s aim is to provide knowledge about slow fashion brand consumers. This means
that in order to fulfil the purpose of the study, people were included in the process which
makes it important to take ethical issues into consideration (Bryman, 2015, pp.132).

Data for this research was gathered through semi-structured interviews that were conducted
with customers of a slow fashion company. During the data collection process no participants
were harmed in any way by the research. To selected customers of the slow fashion brand, an
invitation was sent via email to ask them to participate in the study. The email stated that the
information provided through interview would be anonymous and only be used to conduct a
master’s thesis. Five people from the selected customers voluntarily agreed to participate in
the study. After their positive response to the participation email, the participants received
more detailed email where the approximate time of the interview was stated and time was set
for the interview. In the beginning of every interview, the researcher introduced herself and
asked permission to record the dialogue. At the end of the interview, interviewees were able to
ask any questions related to the research. As promised to the interviewees, all the data
presented in this study regarding the customers is anonymised and the interviewees’ names
were changed so they could not be identified.

5. Findings and analysis

This chapter provides an overview of the findings of the empirical research and provides an
analysis of the main themes that emerged from the coding process of slow fashion brand
customers interviews. The following themes describes the slow fashion buyer and what
influences her buying decision. The interviewees are referred in the text as consumers.

The purpose of this study is to develop a slow fashion customer persona that communicates
the characteristics and aspects that influence purchase decisions of slow fashion customer.
Therefore, the interview transcriptions were processed using coding method. The emerged
codes that gave information regarding customer’s demographic, psychographic, behavioural
information or aspects related to buying process were gathered. Further, the themes are
created from most repetitive codes that emerged from the interviews transcriptions and were
giving information regarding purchase decision making process based on what primary
persona was identified and descriptive themes to provide information of who the persona is.
Below there is interview data analysed under each theme. Quotes from the participants are
used to describe the theme. Including quotes from the research participants also improves the
confirmability of this thesis and reduces researcher biases (Silverman, 2011, pp. 369).
It has to be noted, that the aim of this study was to give a representation of slow fashion brand
customer, therefore, the study did not prove or disapprove any theories related to slow fashion
consumer that were presented in the literature review.

5.1 Themes that describe who is the slow fashion brand customer

Figure 2 illustrates themes that emerged from the participants interview’s coding process.
Those themes describe demographic, psychographic and behavioural information that
emerged most frequently form the interviews and later contribute to building a persona
profile.

Figure 2: Themes describing the slow fashion brand customer

5.1.1 Creative mind

What emerged from analysing the interview transcripts, is that the slow fashion consumers
who were interviewed are all working in a rather creative field like graphic design, garment
design, brand and communication, art consultancy or international relations. The field of work
is closely related to their interests and education. All of the participants are highly educated in
universities with various fields like photography and graphic design, communication and
advertising psychology, garment design, language and cultures. Besides getting a degree from
a university, the consumers are interested in finding ways to keep on learning new things like
taking courses abroad about different languages, mask creation or becoming a yoga teacher.
The other way to keep on exploring new things is through reading which they are very fond
of. Some of them are part of a book circle where different books regarding fiction from all
over the world and philosophy are handled, some just read to keep the mind fresh and open to
new ideas.

5.1.2 Globetrotter and explorer

One of the dominating characteristics that emerged from the interviews was the interest in
travelling and living abroad. Living abroad has been part of all of the consumers' lives. They
mainly left the home country first to study abroad that later evolved to working in different
countries. Apart from their country of origin Sweden, Estonia and Germany, the consumers
have been living in Russia, Germany, France, the United States, South Africa and Wales. As a
result of being part of different cultures, these consumers also understand and talk different
languages like English, French, Spanish, Turkish, German and Africans.

Travelling and living abroad has changed various aspects of the lives of consumers. One of
the examples is Consumer 2, who is dividing her life between home country Estonia and
France. She admits that over the years that she has spent abroad, her way of thinking of life
has changed from following the rules to taking life more easily: "The optimistic state of mind
of people in Paris has also changed me a lot. They are taking life easily and finding time to
enjoy good food as well life itself. Comparing to the life I had before where i was strict and
very into doing things according to rules, the years i have spent in Paris have made me a
more relaxed person, and i feel now i am taking it easy and find time to enjoy life more
(Consumer 2)." Being away from home countries have been an eye opening experience in
finding and improving herself as well learning through adapting with different cultures. This
has also made the consumer's value experiences over things. Investing in the experience of
travelling to new places is often preferred over buying new things.

Also, the mindset of consumption has been affected by travelling to different places. Often the
mindset is influenced by having personal negative experience seeing people and nature
suffering because of the mass consumption culture that has been created. Consumer 3 had an
eye opening trip to Asia that made her want to contribute to a good cause and therefore after
her trip, she joined non-governmental environmental organisation Greenpeace. First starting
as a volunteer and over the years continued her work as a full-time employee. From that time,
sustainability has become a very important question for her. This also reflects on her choices
which are done in the sustainability point of view to leave as little ecological footprint as
possible. Other ways how travelling have changed the mindset and raised awareness in
different areas, including the issues within clothing industry, are also reflected in further
paragraphs across all the themes that emerged from the analysis of interview transcripts.




5.1.3 Fondness of nature

All the consumers are spending their everyday life with working and living in the city.
However, whenever they get a chance, they prefer being in nature to rest from the daily life
and find balance within themselves. Consumer 1 enjoys hiking, which she often does in her
home country Germany, but also likes to go to the Alps in Italy and Austria by train.
Consumer 5 uses a chance to get away from the city life every possible weekend with visiting
her parents in the countryside and using the time to relax with a good book or just rest her
mind with staying outside as much as possible. Likewise to consumer 1, who as well uses
weekends to go for a longer run or a walk in the woods.

Consumer 4, whose interest in sailing has been given to her by her family, enjoys sailing to
Mediterranean or prefers going on trips where she can enjoy nature in general. She also brings
out that after having the experience of living in the metropolitan areas like New York, she
feels that she belongs to nature: "Apart from living in town and I have lived in the major
metropolitan areas most of my grown up life, i have always had the urge to not be in the
urban environment but be of the nature, because that's what i feel where i belong (Consumer
4)." Nature for the consumers is seen as a place to rest the mind through hiking, sailing or
just enjoying quietness in the woods: “You get more inspiration in Paris, it's vibrant and
creative environment, but in the meantime in Estonia it's nice to visit the family and friends
and go to the woods to rest from the big city noise (Consumer 2).”
5.2 Themes that describe what influences slow fashion brand
customer’s decision making

Themes presented in Figure 3 describe what factors that influence slow fashion customer
purchasing decisions emerged most frequently from the interviews demographic,
psychographic and behavioural information that emerged most frequently form the
interviews. Later these themes are used to create the primary persona of slow fashion brand
customer.

Figure 3:Themes describing what influences the slow fashion brand customer purchase
decision

5.2.1 Conscious consumer

The experiences and knowledge the consumers have gathered through travelling, exploring
new books and trying out new things have an affect on their consumption practices. One way
or another, conscious choices are part of these slow fashion consumers' lifestyle. The interest
in trying to leave as little ecological footprint to the environment and taking care of their
health expresses from their behaviour differently.

When it comes to food and cooking, all of the participants enjoy making good food, as well
consuming quality food. Going to a farmers market is their traditional activity and when
cooking, most of the ingredients are consciously chosen as organic for the sake of their health:
"With food also, i like cooking, and i use mainly organic stuff like eggs and milk and bread
and sugar and vegetables are organic, but some things are not organic of course. I buy it for
my health, it's very egoistic. (Consumer 3)" Also skin care products and cosmetics the
consumers use, are required to be eco-friendly and natural. This is mainly to avoid using bad
ingredients that irritate the skin or affect health. The products are often purchased from a
pharmacy or from certain stores that offer ecological brands that are certified and controlled.
It can be concluded from the interviews that if a consumer has knowledge that the products
from the store are certified and controlled builds a trust of the consumer which expresses
through their loyalty to the store. Therefore, the trust a consumer has in store also can affect
an image and the trust of a brand that the store sells in a positive way.

Most of the consumers consciously do not own their own car because of not having a need for
it as well its contribution to environmental pollution. Instead, public transportation or a bike is
used to get from one place to another. One of the consumers is part of carpool and mentioned
that if she had a car, it would be Tesla, because of its environmental and energy contribution
as well its lifestyle concept. Consumer 3 has one car per family, and this is consciously
chosen to run with eco gas.

The habit of making a conscious decision with an aim to leave little footprint to the
environment can be influenced by family members. Consumer 4 comes from a family where
consciously deciding how to spend resources and take care of things was part, and still is part
of her everyday life. Whenever she purchases something, like a garment, she uses it for a long
period of time and takes good care of it. When she feels she does not need the garment
anymore, she first presents them to her mother or friends, and if none of them wants it, she
donates her clothes or makes something new out of it herself. Therefore she contributes to
sustainability also when discarding the clothes, with not just throwing them away, but finding
an alternative to the not needed item. Also, consumer 1 has her own way of handling clothes
she does not want anymore. Two years ago, she started to avoid stores like H&M and Zara
and instead consciously started consuming items that are produced ethically correct. It was
caused by becoming overwhelmed by all the things she had in her apartment and by the
awareness she got from the news, regarding issues in the third world factories. This made her
change her lifestyle to more minimalistic. Now, when deciding to buy something new for
herself, she has a rule: "I have a rule, for example, if i get bored of a pair of shoes or some
trousers are not that comfortable for me anymore, before buying a new item, i have to sell the
previous one. I try to sell it because at the moment you can easily do it. So a number of my
clothes never become more (Consumer 1)."

There are also brands that the consumers consciously are avoiding. The reason of avoidance
can be related to a bad reputation in the sustainability field or simply garment brands that
would make the person look dull or make her into something she does not want to be.
Consumer 2 hopes she never buys anything from H&M because sees them as hypocritical
with their conscious collection: “This is so apparent marketing, they are just fooling people, i
don’t like this. I think they just see it as a place to cut profit from (Consumer 2).” This shows
that slow fashion consumers do not believe everything they hear or read and can critically
evaluate the fashion brands that claim to contribute to more sustainable fashion industry. A
brand consumer 1 never sees herself buying things from anymore is Primark:“I would never
buy Primark. T-shirt can’t cost only 3 euros. At least i don't want to believe that it only costs 3
euro (Consumer 1). Apparently, too low costs of a garment and awareness that has been raised
through media have made the consumers questioning how is it possible for a t-shirt to cost so
little and affect their purchase decisions.
Even though making conscious decisions is part of the daily lives of slow fashion consumers,
there still can be purchases that does not make one feel good because her choice does not
contribute to anything good. Being all the time conscious about one's purchase decisions can
be time and energy consuming since consciousness is being aware of the product and its
background which often is achieved through research about a product or a brand. Consumer 4
sees from her behavior that this kind of behavior comes along when she is lacking time or
chooses not to see the whole picture: "I think for me it could be a lack of time or you choose
not to see the whole picture sometimes and as soon as soon as you remind what you are really
doing or really contributing you feel really really bad. I think most people to stay alive and
not go insane, choose not to see the whole truth. Even if we are contributing to it, but we see
ourselves as not important part of the process, even if we are (Consumer 4)."

5.2.2 Preferring quality to quantity

As stated in previous paragraphs, the consumers are very conscious about the products they
use and the same goes with garments. They see themselves as very picky consumers. For
them, an item has to give value with a design, beautiful craftsmanship and with a high quality
of materials. Sustainability aspect of the garment is a bonus, not the main thing. They would
never buy something just because it is sustainable: "The item has to be beautiful for me to buy
this. The fact that it is made of organic fabric, it's really nice, but it is a bonus, not the main
thing (Consumer 2)." And with “beautiful” they mean that the garment has to fit her style and
have a good quality of craftsmanship as well material selection.

The design of the garment is preferred to be rather basic, but at the same time interesting,
meaning that the garment could be combined with other pieces and could be worn over
seasons. Therefore the design of the slow of fashion consumers garments does not reflect
mainstream trends, but rather their personal style. The colour palette of clothes is often
monochrome consisting of neutral colours like black, grey, dark blue or white this also with a
purpose to mix the garments with each other as much as possible. Good quality of the
clothing provides longer lifespan of the garment which the consumer considers important.: "I
have seventeen items from MASKA. And they are soo good because you can use them even if
you wash them and use them many times, they are in the same good quality (Consumer 3)."

As with consumer 3 whose views were changed with a trip to Asia, having negative personal
experience also affected consumer behaviour for consumer 2. She started to value quality over
quantity after becoming aware of the problems in clothing industry and mass productions in
combination the experience she got when travelling to New York: "Through media started to
come more and more news regarding the problems with factories that produce garments for
fast fashion chains and i started to think about this more and get more interested about this.
Especially while travelling in New York and seeing these piles of clothes and the smell of
plastic in Forever 21 and other big franchises. I started to think where does it all go and
where did it all come from or from what cost. So the more i knew and thought about it, the less
i visited these stores and started to invest more in quality. (Consumer 2)"

5.2.3 Shoppers of small boutiques

When purchasing new clothes, it is usually for a reason not because of an impulsive state of
mind. As stated above, ability to mix the purchased clothes with already existing ones, is
considered to be one requirement of making a purchase for slow fashion consumers: "I don't
like purchasing clothes without any reason, and I haven't bought myself clothes that i would
have only worn once or that i actually wouldn't need. When purchasing something, i always
think what else could i wear it with (Consumer 5)."

However, their purchase decision-making journey starts with liking the design of the garment:
"It starts with a design, I'm very conscious of what i am wearing, so i am very picky, so it has
to be me (Consumer 4)." As discussed above, the slow fashion consumers are very picky
when it comes to investing in new wardrobe. The garment has to fit their style rather than
reflect trends, and the important role of the decision making also plays the material selection,
quality of the garment as well the background of its production. They never buy garments
because of the brand name. Brand names just help them navigate from where they most
likely find clothing that is suitable to their style.

For buying new clothes, they prefer small sized boutique shops to big shopping malls. Malls
are places they rather avoid because shopping there does not provide any experience and often
the clothes in these stores have a smell of plastic which they find disturbing. Also, they do not
want to be part of the quantity oriented shopping culture that malls are encouraging: "I hate
this shopping culture, so i buy as little as i can because i hate this spending, wearing throwing
away. I try to stay out of this hysterical shopping places because i don't want to be part
(Consumer 4)." The brands and stores to purchase from, they usually find when travelling.
The reason for that is slow fashion brand selection in different countries may be bigger
compared to their home countries. Some of them are also shopping online, but this when the
brand is not reachable from stores nearby. However, they prefer going to a store and try on the
garment and feel the material. From certain countries, the accessibility to sustainable brands is
limited, also than online purchasing is used.
The brand's list that the consumers mainly consume is rather different from each other, this
because of the different residence locations and brand accessibility. Consumer 1, who is from
Germany, does most of her shopping online since the brands she likes, are not accessible from
the city she lives in. From her closet can be found brands like Acne and Maska for example.
Also, consumers from Sweden are making a purchase mainly from Swedish brands like Tiger
of Sweden, Nudie Jeans, Hope, Maska, Whyred, Acne, Weekday. Consumer 4 considers
herself little interested in fashion and thinks it is also a reason why the brands that have found
a way to her wardrobe are the ones she sees around her. Consumer 3 consciously uses the
brands because she is already aware of their background and knows that the clothes she gets
from those stores meet her standards.

Consumer 2 who is from Estonia and lives part time in Paris, wears a lot of her own brand.
She started the brand because of having lack of local brands from where she could find
clothes suitable to her very minimalistic style. Besides that, she is a loyal designer brands
consumer. From her wardrobe can be found names like Joseph, Christophe Lemaire,
Baserange. She stated that she is buying designer's creations because it is more expensive but
at the same time with greater quality, therefore the garment has a higher value for her, and she
takes care of it more. From the other Estonian, consumer 5, closet can be found Estonian
brands along with unknown ones that she has purchased during her travels and few pieces
from Zara as well from H&M.


5.2.4 Gain their trust to win them over

The consumers are very knowledgeable about the characteristics of materials they prefer and
what is the background of the garment production. One way it is achieved is with asking
questions regarding the products from the store staff: "I am asking when I'm in shops. I'm the
generation that is not very comfortable with buying things from the Internet. I am going to the
store because i want to try them on (Consumer 3)." They are also paying attention to the
labels or information from the online store to find out the fabric compositions. Transparency
about the production and materials is preferred and is one of the ways to build trust between
the brand and the consumer: "But if i go to the website of the brand and i can see clearly how
is the production, what are the materials, where does it come from. If it's really really clear
for me, then it's really nice to see. If i am clicking on the sweater and i have the size and the
whole information about the production, then i read it. It should be clear how are they
producing this and how they get this stuff. I like the transparency (Consumer 1). "
Consequently, the more brand gives information regarding its supply chain to a consumer and
also to store staff, can influence the purchase decision of the consumer. Educating the
customer and providing them information can be considered a way to build trust between the
brand and a consumer.
Before starting to consume slow fashion, the consumer 1 purchased clothes from Europe’s
biggest online retail store Zalando. After changing to slow fashion, she prefers purchasing
clothes from the brand’s online stores: “I used to buy a lot from Zalando, but since i am
avoiding fast fashion, i have started to use online shops of the brands (Consumer 1). Now
when she comes across to new ethical online brands from shopping in online retailer store,
she always goes to the found brand's web page whether they have online shop or not. She
does that to find more information regarding the products as well to see if they have bigger
selection of things. She also states that for her it is more trustworthy to purchase from a
brand's web page / online store rather than from a general online retailer. As Zalando is one
of the most known online retail platforms, people feel confident making purchases from the
site. Since online retailers who offer slow fashion products are not that known yet and also do
not promote themselves as strongly as Zalando does, the confidence of providing them credit
card information and making a purchase from a site can affect purchase decision of the
consumer.

The consumer 1 also buys her skin care products always from the same store. She knows that
the store strictly controls the brands they sell to really be organic so she can make purchases
there without having to make an effort for further research about the products herself. The
same point comes out from a statement from consumer 4, where she emphasises the need for
legislations by government or stores that she can trust to strictly sell stuff that is done without
any ethical or sustainable harm. This could save time and energy of the
consumers.“Sustainability and slow fashion things should be like natural, it should be given.
Why make things that are bad for people and environment, it doesn't feel good in the stomach
if you do. I think that is something that we should legislation around. It has to meet certain
standards, then the consumers don't have to make all these choices, every time you make a
choice, you buy something, you have to be so active, and most of us don't have that time, we
want the decision to be made for us. I want to know that when i go to a food shop, i want to
know that everything i buy there is produced in a way that is sustainable for the planet and
the people. That's how i wish it were (Consumer 4).” Perhaps retails stores that state and
communicate their strict policy in choosing only sustainable and slow fashion brands is the
key to success for both online and physical retail stores. As a result of the interviews, slow
fashion consumers would become loyal customers of the store knowing that they can make
their purchases from the store with good conscious.

5.2.5 ”It's important that you are attracting those kinds of people just looking
for beauty. "

When it comes to fashion communication through social media, the most heavily used
platform by the consumers is Instagram. It is used mainly to keep track on their friend's
doings, but also follow accounts and get inspiration related to things of their interest. The
style of the accounts they follow in general has to raise interest and be beautiful. They enjoy
following accounts where photography is displayed interestingly and nicely.

Consumer 1 who is interested in fashion, follows accounts of makeup artists, people related to
fashion and brands that she likes but not necessarily consumes. Instagram is also a place for
her to discover new similar brands to the ones that she already finds interesting: "Usually, for
example, if you are following Maska, Instagram is suggesting other brands which are also
ethically correct. So i am checking the profile, and if i like the style, i am following this
(Consumer 1)." The account she finds interesting should be a mixture of nice products and a
presentation of how they are doing these nice products since she values transparency of
brands actions.

Consumer 2, as a person who is working in the fashion industry, uses Instagram to follow
different brands and bloggers. She selects brands she follows based on the visuals of the
brand. When following brands, she says that the story behind the brand affects her interest to
it. One of her favourites is Maria Van Nguyen whose account she finds beautiful and stylish.
The account also reflects consumer's own style which she describes as simple and minimal.
The brand selection that she states as few of her favourites are Shaina Mote, Kowtow, Aeron
and Clo.

Consumer 3 who works with people in art industry, also follows accounts related to this field.
For example, first account that pops to her mind is Museum of Modern Art. She follows it to
get the latest news regarding exhibitions that are presented there. She consciously does not
follow any particular brands because she is not interested in advertisements that are presented
in their accounts. However, she believes that the brands who are doing things with taking into
consideration sustainability should attract people who are just looking for beauty.
Sustainability aspect is just a bonus for the great design.

Consumer 5, who works as a freelance graphic and web designer and full-time web editor,
follows very few accounts related to her interests and more her friends' accounts. For example
from her followings list can be found Graphic Design Blog as well one fashion brand August.

Consumer 4 who runs a brand consultancy agency, is also very interested in interior design
and one of her favourite accounts is an interior stylist from Sweden who owns an interior
design boutique Kvart in Gothenburg. She also follows fashion brands, but this with a
perspective of the brands she works with not by her personal interest. She is using her
personal Instagram account to practice her photography skills: “I like to try and use my design
and layout skills to present my life in a way that looks good (Consumer 4).”
When it comes to fashion brands and their communication, she thinks fast fashion companies
are better at communication because they tend to be bigger and seen everywhere, when they
are doing a sustainably conscious collection, they are better at making a big deal out of it: "I
think maybe the fast fashion companies are better at communication because they tend to be
bigger, which also goes to their collection, they are better at making a big deal out of it. So
they are better at communication, and it's more in your face. They are communicating as if
they are the savers of the world." Slow fashion brand approach, however, feels more personal,
which she thinks should also stay that way: "Whereas slow fashion companies usually come
from ground and up, which means that they are smaller and they don't have resources for
communication, and it's more personal. You can really feel that, and i think it has got a value
to it. Today you have such a big arena brands shouting at you all the time, you have a
tendency to lead towards the brands that are more personal meaning that they communicate
with you not everybody even if they do, so i think a lot of slow fashion brands are trying to be
big, but i think they have something to win if they still allow themselves to be still personal
(Consumer 4)." Slow fashion brands communicate more the values their products give to a
person, not so much their contribution to saving the world. From previously mentioned
brand's Instagram accounts can be seen that their posts describe the material selection of the
garment and display it is simple and minimal design, this informs and educates the customer
and perhaps raises trust toward the brand.

The consumers also use Facebook, but seldom and only to get information regarding different
events and maybe read articles related to their interests. Also, Pinterest is used for finding
inspiration regarding interests and LinkedIn for professional reasons. Few of them keep an
eye on different bloggers but admit that they would do it more if they were reminded daily to
take a look.
6. Discussion

The findings and analysis chapter of this thesis presented the themes that emerged through the
coding process of the interview transcripts. Now, these themes are used to construct a slow
fashion brand buyer persona. As a result, both of the research questions regarding slow
fashion consumer profile and buying insights are answered, and slow fashion buyer persona
is created. Also, relation to previous research in the field of slow fashion consumers is
combined with the persona creation.

The concept of slow fashion persona is put together through data analyzation of interviews
gathered from five slow fashion brand consumers from Sweden, Germany Estonia. However,
as a result of the interview transcripts' analysis, it became aware that the consumers, if not
now, then previously have shared their life between different countries which also has affected
their world views and decision making. Therefore in this buyer persona creation, it is not
stated one certain country where the consumer may be from because it could not be further
generalised to people for one certain country. Below is presented slow fashion persona
description first presenting the profile of slow fashion buyer which describes the persona (an
answer to research question 1) as well her lifestyle and social media usage. Later the buying
insights of the persona are revealed which gives an understanding what aspects are
influencing the persona's buying decision making and also answers to research question 2.

6.1 Slow fashion consumer profile - an answer to RQ 1

The slow fashion persona is a female with higher education in a rather creative field like
design and communication. Her occupation is closely related to her interests and education.
Therefore she works in the area of brand communications which requires knowledge of
different cultures and design. She always keeps educating herself in the field of her interests,
like taking training to become a yoga teacher or learning a new language. She is also fond of
keeping her mind fresh and open to new ideas through reading books regarding philosophy
and fiction.

Book author of “In Praise of Slow” (2009), Carl Honore states that slow movement
philosophy is about finding balance between the two opposites of slow and fast. This mindset
also reflects from the lifestyle of slow fashion persona. Spending her everyday life in the city,
she often escapes to the nature to rest her mind from the city life through hiking or just
enjoying silence. Her fondness for nature also reflects on the selection of her travel locations.
When travelling, she is an explorer and rarely goes back to places she has explored before,
unless it is related to her work or friends visiting. She prefers investing in new experiences
she gets through travelling over buying new things for herself.
Slow fashion persona could also be part of group called LOHAS- Lifestyle of Health and
Sustainability followers who are also known as value-driven consumers (Aburdene 2007,
Heim 2011). They are thinking a lot about how their lifestyle affects other people as well the
environment and do not only think about their benefits. The same is with the slow fashion
persona, frequent travelling and living abroad has changed her views on life and decision
making a lot. With her activities and consumption practices, she tries to leave as little
footprint as possible to the environment and people because of the awareness of
environmental problems. She values quality and is a picky consumer. For example, a garment
she purchases has to give value with a good design that also fits with her minimal and simple
style. Since she has good knowledge about materials, beautiful craftsmanship and quality
materials that last long and does not reflect trends but could be used over seasons, are
preferred. Also ethical and sustainable production practises of her garments are something she
values and prefers. This also emerged from the report by WGSN of Future Consumers (2015),
where was stated that more and more people are paying attention to the quality, style and long
lasting design of the garment. Taking good care of her garments is usual process for her.
When feeling like discarding anything, she never throws away the garment to garbage, but
offers them to her closest friends and family or makes something new out of it.

Previously mentioned LOHAS also have their health in the mind when deciding to consume
something (Heim, 2011). The same goes with slow fashion persona. From her beauty and skin
care products' selection can be found products that are natural and does not irritate her skin.
For that, she has certain stores she trusts that sell certified natural products. Also when
cooking, most of the raw food is organic. Taking time to make good food from organic
products is important to her. On the weekend she spends time with friends, often at the
restaurant or a cafe enjoying good culinary.

When it comes to media usage, the consumer uses Instagram to keep track on her friends'
doings, and she also follows accounts and gets inspiration related to her interests like interior
design, museums and fashion brands. She uses Instagram to present her own life in taking
creative photographs out of it. The interior design accounts she follows reflect the
Scandinavian style of interior she likes also followed fashion brands reflect her own style, but
not necessarily what she consumes. As well, magazines related to interests are read or
skimmed through when having a chance. However, they are purchased only when travelling
somewhere and having the opportunity to purchase international ones from the airport.
Fashion magazines are skimmed through often out of the interest to keep track what are the
current and upcoming trends. The consumer also uses Facebook, but this to get information
regarding different events and read articles related to their interests and not so much to follow
brands.
As presented in the literature review, participants of slow fashion perception study indicated
that slow fashion movement is here to stay and will slowly gain popularity (Pookulangara &
Shephard, 2012), so does think the slow fashion consumer. Especially because of the
increasing focus on sustainability and ethical consumerism which has also been spread to
consumers through showing what is going on behind the curtains of fast fashion. The slow
fashion persona has certain brands she does not see herself consuming. Not only because of
their bad sustainability contributions, but also lack of quality of the garments. As one of the
world's most famous trend forecaster Lidewij Edelkoort predicts, the importance of garment
quality and concentration of clothing not so much on trends or fashion as we know it will
bring back couture.

6.2 Buying Insights - an answer to RQ 2

There are certain aspects that influence the slow fashion persona on her purchase decision. If
a slow fashion consumer had to choose between two brands that offer same design, she would
choose the one that offers the design with better quality and material, even if it is more
expensive. The sustainable and ethical production of the garment is also considered as
important aspect but rather seen as bonus, not priority. Also, previous research on slow
fashion consumers consumes slow fashion because of its high quality and versatile nature
(Watson and Yan, 2013). The persona expects the garment to sustain its quality and design for
a long time and maintain its quality after long period of usage. This, however, requires good
craftsmanship and quality material usage when producing the garment.

The consumers avoid brands that offer garments that does not go together with their style or
image. Also, brands, which have a negative reputation in their mind are not finding their way
in slow fashion persona's closet. Often the reputation in her mind has turned into negative
because of the unethical and sustainable aspects of the production process or presenting false
information, therefore, abuse their trust. The high conscious level also means that the
consumers have an awareness of previously mentioned aspects. Therefore, they can critically
analyse if the company are genuine presenting their sustainability actions, or is it just to fool
people and use it as marketing tool.

The first thing that the consumer is evaluating while making a decision to make a purchase is
a design of the garment. The design has to be interesting, but at the same time simple and
have a monochrome colour palette. It is also important that the design of the garment fits the
style of the person and could be combined with other items from her closet. If the consumer is
happy with the design, she starts to evaluate the craftsmanship and quality of materials. It is
essential for her to invest into garments that last long and are made of materials that feel good
on her skin. Then comes the production aspect. Garments that are produced sustainably and
ethically are preferred. Which means that it is important to present information regarding
production practices to the consumer, otherwise she might decide to pick another brand.

It is not often that she makes impulse purchases. This might happen if she accidentally finds
something that she really feels reflects her style. The buyer's journey of slow fashion
consumer starts from discovering the need of something. The shopping process also does not
involve shopping malls, but rather small boutiques are preferred. There are certain brands that
the buyer knows could trust regarding good design, high quality and sustainability aspects. If
the product selection does not provide what is needed, further research is being done. The
consumer seeks experience from the shopping which means, that also one of the reasons she
prefers shopping from bricks and mortar stores rather doing it online. Trying on the garments
and feeling the material is important for her during decision making. However, online store is
used when the brand selection nearby does not provide what is needed. When shopping
online, she often does it from a brand's own online store than general online retailer because
feeling more secure doing it from the brand's page.

7. Conclusion

This chapter will present the conclusions of the study and future research suggestions are
proposed.

The reason for the emergence of this thesis topic was tho focus an attention to slow fashion
brand female customers who have bought from a slow fashion brand. Since slow fashion
concept promotes slow culture and values in fashion, providing knowledge about the what
aspects influence their purchasing decisions together with customer profile, would benefit the
fashion industry to contribute to more sustainable approach. Also insights to future research
on slow fashion buyer concept as well persona concept could be used from this study.

In order to expand knowledge of slow fashion brand customer, a persona that communicates
the characteristics and aspects that influence purchase decisions of slow fashion buyer was
developed with this study. To answer the research questions and develop persona, five female
slow fashion brand buyers were interviewed. Answering the research questions provided 8
different themes that emerged from the interview transcripts and made up slow fashion brand
buyer persona, which fulfilled the purpose. The emerged themes were describing who slow
fashion brand buyer persona is: 1) creative mind; 2) globetrotter and explorer; 3)fond of
nature, and themes that described what influences the slow fashion buyer: 4) consciousness;
5) quality over quantity; 6)shoppers of small boutiques; 7)trust; 8) esthetics.

This study did not come to a firm conclusion, but rather aimed to provide more in-depth
knowledge about slow fashion brand buyer and point out implications to further study the
slow fashion consumer.
Also contribution to methodology was provided with this study. To the knowledge of the
researcher, persona creation method had not been undertaken before in the field of fashion
consumer studies. Therefore, this study provided contribution also to methodology, exploring
how persona creation concept could be used in fashion consumer related studies. Persona
approach, to represent user or a buyer, is mainly used in consumer centric design research. In
this study the persona creation concept was used to develop a slow fashion brand customer
persona with an aim to communicate in-depth knowledge about customers of slow fashion
brand. 


7.1 Research limitations and future research

Like any other research, also this study has its limitations that establish possibilities for future
research. One of the limitation was that due to agreement with the participating slow fashion
brand, only certain amount of their customers were allowed to ask permission to participate in
the study. This resulted in sending an invitation email to 120 of their main customers of whom
5 agreed to participate in this study with giving an interview. Therefore future research could
a larger sample size from different countries could be used to be able to further generalise the
results to a wider audience and build different personas.

Furthermore, only interview data was used to build the persona in this study, but in today’s
world, data-minging and performance measuring tools like Google Analytics and AdWords
could be used to give extra contribution to the research.

Also, in this study the slow fashion brand customer persona was developed, but in the future
research with a longer time limitation, it would be interesting to investigate the whole process
of developing a persona to applying the persona to marketing and communication strategies.
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9.0 Appendix

Appendix 1: Interview guide

Demographic/Personal background
Please tell me about yourself.
Where do you live?
Family - married, cohabitant, single, kids, how many?
Profession mentioned in the survey, but do they work full time / part time?
Key responsibilities at work
Education?
What languages do you speak?

Psychographic
What are your hobbies or activities that you enjoy on regular basis? How do you spend your
time?
What are you interested in? - for example architecture, food, fashion, interior design - Why?
Do you follow any brands related to your interests in social media?
What do you like about their communication? Why do you follow the brands? Perhaps you
remember how did you find the brands?

What other brands do you like / consume, apart from fashion, for example what kind of skin
products do you use? Or is there any specific coffee you like to drink? Why?
Do you follow the brands in social media? Why? Do you like how they communicate to their
customers? Dislike?
Name a brand that you would never buy? Why?
What are the brands you consumer most frequently?

Buying behavior
Can you please describe your last garment purchase. Did you buy the garment because you
liked it or because you needed it?
How do you find new clothing brands?
Where do you buy most of your clothes? From online store or physical store?
How often do you purchase a new clothing?
What do you take into consideration when you purchase a new garment?
 !

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