The business case for corporate social responsibility: can luxury and fashion brands be sustainable from consumer perspective?

Purpose - Luxury fashion managers need to have a better understanding of the factors that can foster and hamper sustainable luxury and fashion consumption in order to design advanced product and marketing strategies, communicate brand sustainability attributes without inducing undesirable effects and address corporate social responsibility (CSR) implementation strategically. It is necessary for reaping the financial benefits of social responsibility investments and building long-lasting relationships with ethically mindful and responsible luxury fashion consumers. Design/methodology - Using the convenience and voluntary response sampling methods, 453 survey responses were collected online from self-reported luxury fashion consumers. Data were analysed using the softwares SmartPLS 4 and SPSS 29 to test and evaluate the relationships between the variables in the study. Findings - The findings of this study indicate that consumers’ awareness of luxury fashion brands’ sustainability, expectations for luxury fashion brands’ sustainability, attitudes towards sustainable luxury fashion brands, attributions for luxury fashion brands’ intrinsic sustainability and perceived value of circular luxury fashion brands positively affect consumers’ purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands. Consumers’ perceived contradiction between luxury fashion and sustainability negatively affects consumers’ purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands. This study proposes that consumers’ attitudes towards sustainable luxury fashion brands are the strongest predictor of consumers’ purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands, followed by consumers’ perceived value of circular luxury fashion brands, awareness of luxury fashion brands’ sustainability, attributions for luxury fashion brands’ intrinsic sustainability and expectations for luxury fashion brands’ sustainability. Consumers’ purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands differ based on gender in a way that male and female consumers have higher purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands than gender-neutral consumers. Implications - The findings of this study provide theoretical contributions to the academic literature on corporate social responsibility and academic knowledge on sustainable consumer behaviour in a luxury fashion context. The findings can help managers to improve their decision-making in designing and marketing sustainable luxury fashion brands. Originality/value - This study is among the first to follow an integrative approach in studying sustainable consumer behaviour in the context of luxury fashion. This study is the first to examine the link between the dimensions of sustainability and luxury fashion marketing based on measuring consumers’ expectations for luxury fashion brands’ sustainability and linking them with consumers’ purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands. The study is the first to examine how consumers’ perceived value of circular luxury fashion brands affects consumers’ purchase intentions of sustainable luxury fashion brands.