Barriers to sustainable sourcing in the apparel and fashion luxury industry

Abstract

The fashion industry's transition to Sustainable Sourcing (SS) is crucial to address some of the social and environmental problems faced by societies. While previous research has identified SS implementation barriers in the mainstream fashion industry, this article provides a methodical identification, validation, and prioritization of the 20 key SS implementation barriers for the global apparel and fashion-luxury sector. The paper employs a multi-phase research methodology to benchmark the SS implementation barriers in the apparel and fashion-luxury sector. These barriers were analysed through 154 responses received from global SS professionals by employing a survey questionnaire. Through an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), the barriers were categorized into six unique dimensions. To establish their importance, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) analysis further provided a global ranking of the identified barriers. The results of the study revealed that ‘Management, Government Support, and Infrastructure Barriers’ hold the most significant importance among all barrier dimensions, followed by ‘Material Barriers’, ‘Finance Barriers’, ‘Supplier Barriers’, ‘Certificates and Customer Perceptions’, and ‘Sustainable Packaging and Human Resource Barriers’. Furthermore, the results showed that specific barriers such as ‘Undersupply of Sustainable Raw Materials’, ‘Insufficient Commitment from Top Management’, and ‘Inadequate Awareness’ are the top three barriers according to global ranking. The research theoretically contributes by identifying and ranking the SS barriers that may hinder the efforts of the fashion sector to become more sustainable. This will facilitate researchers, sourcing professionals, fashion retailers, policymakers, and governing bodies in the formulation and deployment of dynamic strategies to overcome them and successfully implement SS practices.