Tell the Consumers How Sustainable Apparel Meets Their Needs and They Will Buy It!

Abstract

Despite the obvious role of consumers' concerns in influencing the purchase intentions for sustainable apparel, the sustainable apparel brands (e.g., Patagonia, TenTree) are focusing on environmental cues in their advertisements rather than conveying how sustainable apparel can meet consumers' concerns. We conducted a 3 (user-centric advertisement concern: affordability vs. social desirability vs. environment protection) x 2 (message modality: textual vs. textual with visual) between-subject online experiment. Individual concerns in the user-centric advertisements (UCAs) are appraised in specific ways (e.g., motive complaint, intrinsically pleasant, legitimate) evoking specific classes of emotions (e.g., instrumental, aesthetic, social) toward sustainable apparel; all classes of emotions encouraged purchase intention for sustainable apparel; appraisal of sustainable apparel mediated the relationship between the concerns presented in the UCAs and the specific classes of emotions. Thus, instead of focusing only on the environmental concern, the sustainable apparel brands should focus on how sustainable apparel could meet consumers' concerns.