Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Sustainability Communications among Fashion Retailers: Comparison of Patagonia and H&M

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Abstract

Using a data mining approach, the purpose of this research is to explore and compare the sustainability communication of a fast fashion brand (H&M) and a sustainable brand (Patagonia), using consumers’ opinions gathered from web-scraped tweets. In total, 14576 tweets were scraped for Patagonia and 19722 tweets were scraped for H&M. The sentiment analysis was performed for all the tweets, and Gephi files were generated for data visualization. The results of this study suggest that consumers are increasingly dissatisfied with fast fashion brands and their unsustainable practices, even if they have a sustainable collection. Fast fashion brands like H&M should rethink their approach to sustainability and implement more environmentally friendly practices to remain competitive and meet consumer expectations.

Keywords: Sustainability communication, fast fashion, slow fashion, data mining

How to Cite:

Kamma, V. & Liang, Y., (2024) “Sustainability Communications among Fashion Retailers: Comparison of Patagonia and H&M”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 80(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.17520