Social and environmental sustainability in the clothing industry: a case study of a fair trade retailer

By H. Goworek. 2011

142 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the issues currently involved in social and environmental sustainability in the clothing industry. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a case study approach to investigate a business that operates successfully in this challenging market. Findings – As a consequence of increasing demand for ethical clothing, it has become standard practice for UK clothing retailers to develop CSR policies which impact upon their methods of garment sourcing and partnerships with suppliers. There is also a significant trend for retailers to offer ethical clothing ranges made from organic cotton or produced by Fair Trade manufacturers. The paper includes a case study on People Tree, which sells Fair Trade clothing sourced from developing countries. People Tree is rare amongst clothing companies in that it provides customers with a transparent view of its production sources via the internet. The company provides an example of how socially responsible and environmentally sustainable global sourcing can be applied in practice. Research limitations/implications – The study focuses on aspects of sustainability in an individual retailer. This could be extended to other ethical retailers in different countries, and a longitudinal study of such companies could be conducted. Originality/value – Literature on ethical fashion companies and their use of socially responsible strategies is sparse, and there is a lack of research that covers both social and environmental sustainability in this market. This paper fills some of the gaps.

Subfields: Marketing, Museology, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/043a81e0d345966fcb659dc04deca18af39dbf32

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Marketing

1. Deniz Köksal
2. Matthew Freise
3. Martin Müller
4. Byoungho Jin
5. Elgar Fleisch
6. Sojin Jung
7. Jochen Strähle

In Museology

1. Byoungho Jin
2. Sojin Jung

In Strategy and Management

1. Deniz Köksal
2. Matthew Freise
3. Martin Müller
4. Byoungho Jin
5. Sojin Jung
6. Jochen Strähle
7. H. S. Heese

Citations in the corpus

• Social Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Textile and Apparel Industry—A Literature Review (2017, background): “Gupta & Hodges [81]; Goworek [93]; Bhaduri & Ha-Brookshire [100]”
• User behavior in a real-world peer-to-peer electricity market (2020, background): “, biological and regional food production [10], fair trade labels [11], or ethical clothing [12]).”
• A theoretical investigation of slow fashion: sustainable future of the apparel industry (2014, background): “The approach to sustainability, however, has been largely limited to environmentally friendly material selection (Niinimäki, 2010) or understanding consumers’ attitudes and behaviors towards apparel made of organically grown cotton, clothing donation and recycling (Shim, 1995; Hustvedt and Dickson, ”