With the growing frequency and quantity of clothing purchases, the elimination rate of waste clothing is increasing. Many researchers have contributed to the topic of the recycling and reuse of waste clothing, and therefore many related literature reviews are emerging. The current reviews only focus on waste textile recycling and waste-clothing life-cycle evaluation. The topic of waste-clothing recycling itself is ignored. In this article, we propose a systematic review of the recycling and reuse of wasted clothes. Firstly, we summarize the existing methods of waste-clothing collection and recycling and the related recycling technology, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. The involved literatures are journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers selected from Google Scholar and Web of Science. Citespace software, as a literature visualization tool is used for the analysis. Based on this review, the low efficiency of waste-clothes recycling can be attributed to poor organization from a management aspect. From a consumer perspective, because of the differences in understanding among consumers about waste-clothing recycling, the existing clothing-recycling system cannot be fully utilized. The results of this review provide reference for further research on waste-clothing recycling, and make suggestions for the relevant governmental/industrial development strategies.

With the emergence of environmental pollution and the excessive waste of resources, the traditional development of the pure pursuit of economic growth has encountered challenges. More and more people are advocating for the concept of sustainable development, which makes sustainable merchandising an urgent necessity. Clothing brands should adhere to the brand sustainability concept and sustainable management in the merchandising process, which can truly improve the competitiveness of the brand. For this reason, a series of studies on sustainable merchandising strategies has been conducted by apparel companies and academia. The existing reviews on sustainability aspects focus on material, recycling, and life-cycle aspects. However, less attention has been paid to the sustainable merchandising aspects of apparel. Therefore, this paper presents a systematic literature review of this topic. We summarize the relevant research on sustainable merchandising from a merchandising perspective and systematically review the relevant theories and cases of sustainable merchandising for the relatively blank field of sustainable brand merchandising for apparel. We have achieved the purpose of integrating the analysis of factors influencing sustainable merchandising, and merchandising strategies. Additionally, on this basis, we discuss how brands can combine social responsibility with merchandising to develop and enjoy the profit space brought by merchandising while assuming and promoting their own brand responsibility. This literature review is based on journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers from the Web of Science (WOS) database and Google Scholar. Through an in-depth analysis of the existing literature, this paper provides an overview of the research topic, the sustainable merchandising of apparel, from a merchandising perspective and discusses the shortcomings of existing merchandising strategies. The findings reveal that there are drawbacks to the current apparel merchandising strategies such as low feasibility, ignoring the driving power of the market, weak consumer awareness, consumer culture, and lack of government intervention and support. This has resulted in the slow development of clothing brands in the sustainable merchandising market. The results of this study provide direction for the development of future sustainable merchandising strategies. It guides policymakers and practitioners to develop relevant strategies for sustainable merchandising in order to provide better market space for sustainable merchandising of apparel.

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