In addition to theoretical implications, the conducted study also has a set of practical implications and suggestions. First, we argue that the findings related to the theory and its usefulness in the studied context is concrete advice for companies in the fashion industry. In other words, we suggest that fashion companies wanting to take a step towards a more sustainable direction should consider using the proposed version of TAM when designing
and planning the implementation of new technology on social media for sustainability purposes.
In addition to this, what became evident from the findings of this study, is the special nature of not only the fashion consumers as users of technology but also the difficulty of
sustainability as a topic in fashion. The fashion industry is an old industry, of which the consumers are content with the current processes in place. This said, adding or changing something in their consumer journey will need to be conducted and communicated in a way that the consumers understand the added value of the technology - again highlighting the usefulness of the proposed TAM model for fashion companies.
Moreover, sustainability in fashion is a topic that is related to each individual’s personal interests, and thus if new technology is related to sustainability, not only do companies need to take into account the new processes that they are imposing on the consumers, but also the specific topic of sustainability. To highlight the importance of this argument, one can think of clothes as a physical need, something that everyone needs. Fashion, in turn, is an interest that some of the people needing clothes have. Taking another step further, there are consumers that are interested in fashion sustainability. This said, fashion
sustainability is not a necessity of consumers, as in it is not something that the consumers need. As the study findings highlighted, even the consumers that are interested in fashion sustainability lack some of the crucial insights into the topic. By this, we want to emphasize the special nature of the topic of fashion sustainability, as it is vital to understand in order to seek to design and communicate technologies for making fashion more sustainable.
11 Conclusion
It has been reported that since the rise of social media, the sales in fashion have
experienced a significant increase of 60%, both online and offline. This increase in sales and fashion consumption has led to the fashion industry being one of the most polluting
industries. To add to this issue, social media alone is responsible for encouraging a trend
that challenges the industry's environmental footprint. This trend is generally referred to as the Outfit Of The Day (OOTD) trend, and encourages social media users to post pictures on social media by only wearing an outfit once. To fight this trend, and thus fight the
sustainability issues of the industry, a fashion company together with a creative agency came up with the idea of creating a digital clothing line, named the Digital Collection by Carlings. The collection tries to provide fashion consumers as social media users an
alternative way of posting the OOTD picture by providing digital, not physical, clothes. This case served as an inspiration to the topic of this exploratory thesis, and the following research question was formulated:
RQ: How can technology tackle sustainability issues?
The research question seeks to assess the possibility, and the ways is which technology could be utilized to fight sustainability issues in fashion. In order to answer the question, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to gain insights from the existing literature and previous research concerning the topic and the selected key concepts of this thesis:
social media, fashion sustainability and FashTech. Based on the insights of the literature review and the formulated research question, a theoretical framework was chosen to be applied in the study to support it. The theory called the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was considered as the most suitable for the purpose of the study, and hence applied to it. The theory served as a frame for the qualitative research that was conducted in the form of four expert interviews. Four experts in the fields of the key concepts were
interviewed in a semi-structured manner in order to collect data for the study. To support the qualitative data collection, a small quantitative research collection was conducted by online observations on the social media platform of Instagram, where the content of 10 fashion influencers were observed. The data collected from the interviews were analyzed in a thematic way, to understand what were the important factors in terms of technology acceptance (TAM), but also in terms of the defined key concepts, and hence the research problem. The insights from the online observations were then also analyzed and added to support the analysis of the interviews.
The findings of the research confirmed that social media is in fact adding to the issue of fashion sustainability by encouraging trends that are not supporting the sustainability of the
industry. The Digital Collection that promoted fighting this issue created by social media, that served as an inspiration to this thesis, was found not to be useful for this purpose. The Digital Collection was found adding to the issue, and encouraging the continuity of social media trends, which support consumers seeing clothes as disposable goods. In other words, the Digital Collection was seen as symptom treatment instead of a solution to sustainability issues. However, the technologies of Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) were brought up as potential technologies to actually encourage and enable change in the industry towards a more sustainable direction. AR was mentioned in the context of virtual fitting rooms, while AI focused on personalization, customer service and the overall consumer journey.
For the potential technologies to concretely be able to tackle sustainability issues in fashion, the technologies need to be used, hence accepted and adopted by the users of technology.
The findings suggest that, in the studied context, the theoretical framework of TAM is useful to assess and predict the acceptance of technologies. The previously mentioned influential factors should be considered when designing the technology and the PU and PEU of it, in addition to which communication concerning the technology should be planned and
conducted in a manner that suits the context of social media and the target group of fashion consumers.
Thus, this study found that sustainability issues in fashion can be tackled through the implementation of new technology on social media. Such technology should be designed and implemented in accordance with the proposed version of TAM, in addition to which the special nature of the topic of fashion sustainability should be acknowledged.
12 Reflections
In the following section the choice and use of theory, as well as the chosen primary research methods, will be reflected upon in the context of the conducted study. In addition,
suggestions concerning future research will be given.