Does Brand Personality Beat Sustainability Claims?

Abstract: Sustainability has been an inevitable topic globally and its importance is not expected to decline in the near future. Lately, sustainable options have taken a bigger proportion of the market share within the fashion industry. However, consumers still have strong (often falsely) preconceptions of what the word sustainability means in a product context. Since brand image is known to have a strong impact on product evaluations, this paper focuses on one of the dimensions of brand image. The chosen dimension is brand personality and its moderating role on consumers' sustainability preconceptions within the fashion industry will be investigated. An experiment was conducted where two variables were being manipulated, the sustainability claim (eco-labeling/statement vs no eco-labeling/statement) and the brand personality (luxury vs non-luxury). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four different scenarios and were asked to rate the product attributes (quality, price and visual appeal) based on their scenario of exposure in order to explore the preconceptions. This report contributes to the existing literature by investigating the combination of sustainability preconceptions and brand personality. There were no significant findings that brand personality had a moderating effect on consumers' sustainability preconceptions. However, the study found that there was a main effect of the brand personality regardless of whether the product was perceived as sustainable or not. Exactly what this means and whether the luxury and non-luxury branding induces positive or negative product evaluations are not revealed in this report and suggested for future research. This could be an interesting topic to further investigate in order for companies to get an understanding of how they can use their brand personality in marketing communication.