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Mining sustainable fashion e-commerce: social media texts and consumer behaviors

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Abstract

Sustainability in fashion e-commerce has attracted the attention of researchers because of its negative impact on the environment. After the advent of social media, sustainable fashion e-commerce is further challenged by the success of marketing practices and their impact on consumer behaviors. As a result, this study aims to positively affect consumer behaviors using social media texts in sustainable fashion marketing. It took a sustainable fashion brand named OnTheList as a case study, and examined its Facebook posts based on the mixed analysis of text mining and ANOVA. The results show that sustainability-related texts have a positive impact on consumers’ liking and commenting behaviors, and price-related texts positively affect consumers’ sharing and commenting behaviors. However, consumer behaviors are not significantly affected by social media texts related to brands and products. As such, the study contributes to the theoretical and managerial implications of current sustainable fashion e-commerce, especially in developing countries.

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Availability of data and materials

All posts analyzed during the current study are available on the OnTheList Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/onthelistofficial/).

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editor, Prof. Juergen Seitz, and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on this paper. This research received no external funding.

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  1. College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, 866 Yuhangtang Rd, Xihu, Hangzhou, 310058, Zhejiang, China

    Zheng Shen

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Shen, Z. Mining sustainable fashion e-commerce: social media texts and consumer behaviors. Electron Commer Res 23, 949–971 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-021-09498-5

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