Merchandising for Sustainable Fashion: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

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.

A Machine Learning-Enhanced 3D Reverse Design Approach to Personalized Garments in Pursuit of Sustainability

“…Step 4: Based on the Bayes theory, the fit characteristics of the i-th sample were decided by Equation (5) in the output layer. This meant that the largest P input i f it j would be identified and the corresponding j would be declared as the category of the input vector input i .…”

“…In recent years, there has been increasing pressure on companies in the fashion industry due to adverse impacts on the natural environment [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The fashion industry accounts for approximately 20 percent of industrial wastewater pollution worldwide, and 8-10 percent of humanity's carbon emissions, is was more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined [7].…”

A Systematic Review and Research Agenda of Body Image and Fashion Trends

“…To investigate consumer attitudes toward fashion trends(2) To further investigate the buying behaviors(3) To assess the trend-setting factors(4) To investigate; what message is impactful via digital media for better footfall(5) To provide better information to designers and trendsetters (6). To ensure that analyzing the factors of the trend will benefit, those who are involved in the fashion industry.…”