Willingness to pay for socially responsible products: case of cotton apparel

Abstract

Purpose -This study seeks to investigate significant factors influencing consumers' willingness to pay a premium for three different socially responsible products -organic cotton, sustainable cotton, and US-grown cotton shirts. Design/methodology/approach -Through random-digit-dialing, the study data were collected from 500 respondents nationally via telephone surveys. The survey data were analyzed using stepwise regression and mean comparisons. Findings -More than half of the respondents indicated that they were willing to pay a premium for organic, sustainable, and US-grown cotton shirts ($5.00 or more for these cotton shirts at the $30.00 retail value). Consumer attitudes toward socially responsible apparel, attitudes toward environment, age, and gender were found to be significant factors for consumers' willingness to pay a premium. Four apparel product evaluative criteria, brand name, laundering requirements, color, and fit, were also found to be important for consumers' willingness to pay a premium. Research limitations/implications -Generalization from the study findings must be assumed with care due to the telephone survey mode. Practical implications -Apparel businesses planning to offer organic, sustainable, or US-grown cotton apparel products may want to emphasize certain tangible benefits, such as strong brand, reasonable price, easy care, color, and fit, concurrently with intangible benefits, such as feeling good by helping society and environment. Originality/value -The findings showed relationships among attitudes, product evaluative criteria, demographic characteristics, and willingness to pay a premium for three different options of socially responsible cotton apparel, in order to help close the gap between attitudes and behavior in consumer research.

Sustainable Retailing in the Fashion Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Although most environmental problems caused by the fashion industry occur in developing countries, we find that most studies and research contexts for green branding in the fashion industry are from Western developed countries (e.g., [23,24,[28][29][30][31]33]), and there is only a handful of researchers focusing on developing countries (e.g., [15,17,20]). The majority of researchers are from Europe and the United States, which both have fast-growing consumer populations that value eco-friendly practices from fashion brands [20,[26][27][28].…”

“…Ritch [20] also discovers consumer perceptions of sustainable fashion consumption and finds some barriers to sustainable consumption in the fashion industry. Ha-Brookshire and Norum [29] suggest that consumers' willingness to pay for premium or sustainable fashion products is positively affected by their attitudes toward sustainable products and brand names, but negatively influenced by consumers' attitudes towards the environment, age, and price. Kumar [32] describes the practices of sustainable retailing in India and identifies nine core groups of sustainable retail practices, such as promoting sustainable business practices, promoting awareness practices, and consumer involvement approaches.…”

“…Ha-Brookshire and Norum [29] Consumers' willingness to pay for premium or sustainable fashion products is positively affected by their attitudes toward sustainable products and brand name, but negatively influenced by consumers' attitudes towards the environment, age, and price. …”

“…After that, the articles were further refined by these themes as the data analysis proceeded. The results of data analysis indicated that these research articles could be categorized into five major content areas, which include: (1) sustainable retailing in disposable fashion, fast fashion, and slow fashion [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]; (2) green branding and eco-labeling [15,17,20,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]; (3) retailing of secondhand fashion [15,18,21,26,32,[36][37][38][39]; (4) reverse logistics in fashion retailing [21,22,[36][37][38]40,41]; (5) emerging retailing opportunities in e-commerce [15,21,22,[42][43]…”

Introducing Sustainability in Value Models to Support Design Decision Making: A Systematic Review

“…The latter is explained by observing that an increasing level of green inventions is found to negatively affect performances of the system [38], following U-shaped relationship. Several studies [39,40] further show that the decision of buying green and paying a premium price is mainly influenced by social and cultural norms, and that individuals are more sensitive towards social sustainability aspects that towards environmental sustainability [41]. Consumers are also found to be rather skeptical towards corporate environmental initiatives [42].…”