Keywords

1 Introduction

Both mainstream and luxury brands are increasingly producing and promoting sustainable products (i.e., products that have a positive social and/or environmental impact). For instance, Westwood recently launched a collection of upcycled bags and iPad cases in partnership with the UN and the World Trade Organization. Gucci launched the world’s first bags certified as zero deforestation. We see similar initiatives by mainstream brands as well. H&M as the world’s second largest apparel company vows to become “climate positive” by 2040. H&M has conscious Exclusive Collection—a line that uses 100% regenerated nylon fiber and recycled silver. Mango’s “Committed” collection uses environmentally friendly dyes, recycled polyester, and organic and recycled cotton. Zara uses eco-label “Join Life” which is made with eco-friendly materials such as organic cotton, recycled wool, and forest-friendly wood fiber for its sustainable collection. With consumers becoming increasingly aware of fashion’s impact on the planet, almost every brand in clothing industry tries to incorporate environmental or social awareness into their DNA and they launch sustainable products lines. A key challenge in articulating the value of green innovation to consumers is determining the most effective structure of communication (Olsen et al. 2014). To reach consumers and influence their attitudes, the framing of the communication plays a crucial role for only through it, specific interpretations can be promoted. So, fashion brands want to know how to communicate their sustainability practices and policies efficiently to their consumers.

Many marketing studies are devoted to the examination of methods to enhance advertising effectiveness. How a message is presented to consumers is indeed a crucial part of these researches. In fact, the way information is labeled or framed may significantly influence consumers’ choice of the product and the subsequent purchase (Smith and Petty 1996). This chapter explores consumers’ reactions toward new sustainable fashion products in terms of purchase intention and attitude toward a sustainable new product considering the influence of brand type (luxury versus mainstream) and appeal type (self- versus others-benefit).

“Self-benefit” appeal originates from an egotistical push and focuses on the idea that the main beneficiary of the purchase is the consumer. On the other hand, “others-benefit” appeal concentrates on the idea of being useful for the community or society as a whole (Kronrod et al. 2012). While consumers might be typically motivated by one of two benefits, marketers regularly employ communication strategies that emphasize one benefit or the other. This research contributes to the literature by comparing the efficacy of appeal types for luxury and mainstream brands related to a sustainable new product. Previous research investigated these effects only in the context of environmentally friendly consumption behavior and more importantly their findings were conflicting. While Hutton and Markley (1991) found that self-benefit communications were more effective, Davis (1994) encouraged for others-benefit message communications to increase environmentally friendly consumption behavior. The intervening and boundary conditions were also investigated to compare the efficacy of self- versus others-benefit appeal types. For instance, Schuhwerk and Lefkoff-Hagius (1995) observed that less environmental-conscious consumers responded more favorably to a self-benefit appeal and more environmental-conscious ones responded equally to both appeal types. Green and Peloza (2014) proved that consumers were more responsive to others-benefit appeals in public settings due to impression-management concerns and to self-benefit appeals in private setting. Previous research also discussed that luxury brands hesitate to communicate their corporate sustainability practices due to negative effects of “greenwashing perceptions” and brand meaning inconsistency issues (Kapferer and Michaut-Denizeau 2014).

Thus, finding the most successful ways to advertise a sustainable new product is crucial for luxury and fast-fashion managers, ad-copy producers, and advertising agencies. The objective of this research is to offer a different perspective on how to promote and advertise the benefits for a sustainable new product.

The second section discusses sustainable consumption. The third section discusses how brand type, namely, luxury versus mainstream, might make a difference for sustainable new products. The fourth section presents the theoretical framework and hypotheses. The fifth section focuses on methods and results. Finally, findings were discussed in conclusions and implications were provided for managers.

2 Sustainable Consumption

Sustainable consumption has become an interest of academics, especially in last decade (Bodur et al. 2014; Luchs et al. 2012; Luchs and Kumar 2017; Peloza et al. 2013). Particularly, fashion industry has been criticized as being non-sustainable due to the significant negative environmental footprint of this industry on the planet. Therefore, fashion companies employ sustainable practices in fashion production. For instance, they are now utilizing sustainable fibers (e.g., hemp, organic cotton, bamboo, post-consumer recycled fabrics), encouraging second-hand clothing channels, and supporting ethical labor practices. Consumers, however, are hesitant to purchase sustainably produced products (McNeill and Moore 2015). Since the fashion industry has short product life cycles and hedonistic consumers (Lundblad and Davies 2016), sustainable fashion consumption will be successful only if consumers purchase those instead of just stating positive attitudes.

Consumers usually have positive attitude toward sustainable products; however, they seldom make purchasing decisions exclusively based on ethicality. This “green attitude-behavior gap” is very present in the clothing industry where consumers are likely to prioritize attributes such as style, aesthetic appeal, and latest fashion fads on other important product characteristics. Based on previous studies, sustainable purchase consumption inconsistency can be explained with these factors:

  1. 1.

    Relatively high price perceptions of sustainable products: Consumers feel frustrated to pay the premium usually charged for sustainable goods. The Green Gauge Global research project specifies that 6 of 10 consumers believe environmentally friendly product alternatives are too expensive (Ayadi and Lapeyre 2016).

  2. 2.

    Reluctance in breaking habits and changing routines: Especially for people having low environmental concern, routine is a key driver of their buying decisions, mainly to be attributed to unconscious and past purchasing behavior (Joshi and Rahman 2016).

  3. 3.

    A credibility issue (greenwashing perceptions): Consumers tend to be skeptical about the actual implementation of green practices by companies believing that the real goal of the firm is a mere enhancement of the brand reputation achieved through the implementation of “greenwashing” practices (Dahl 2010).

  4. 4.

    Low-quality/low-performance/low-durability perceptions of sustainable products: Consumers believe that sustainable products have lower performance compared to nongreen alternative ones. For instance, a sustainable piece of clothing is usually perceived as less comfortable and of lower quality than its regular alternative (Achabou and Dekhili 2013; De Angelis et al. 2017).

In the textile and apparel industries, there is one additional barrier for sustainable consumption: consumers purchase many product categories to communicate meanings about oneself and to create an identity. This is even stronger for clothing and apparel consumption because clothes are continuously on display. Consumers use fashion to create their identity and reinforce their identity (Belk 1988). Since identity construction is very important for many consumers, being fashionable becomes more important than being ethical or sustainable.

3 Luxury Versus Mainstream Brand and Sustainable Products

Consumers’ skepticism is the main issue that firms in the mainstream market must deal with; according to Anamma Joy, marketing professor at the University of British Columbia, consumers see these companies as representation of a sort of “throw-away culture,” making it even harder for such firms to make their efforts toward sustainability credible.Footnote 1

Nevertheless, according to many authors, making consumers aware of the brand engagement in green practices is a crucial tool to solve this credibility problem. While for luxury brands, this very explicit communication might “pollute the dream dimension of luxury” (Kapferer and Michaut-Denizeau 2014), for mainstream brands transparency and explicit advocacy of green practices might be the only way to successfully market new sustainable products. A firm operating in the fast-fashion industry, for example, will most probably benefit from explicitly stating to its customers that the company has been committing to sustainability; not only this can (and has to) be done through regular marketing campaigns but also and, most importantly, through the appearance of the product itself, so through design. The opposite holds for luxury brands (Adıgüzel et al. 2018). Indeed, consumers often buy luxury products to display a status, for this reason they feel reluctant to buy something which is distant from what the company is most famous for. An easily recognizable product design would be particularly important for certain categories of luxury consumers such as Parvenues and Poseurs (Han et al. 2010): these buyers strongly prefer louder luxury product designs, in that they allow them to associate or dissociate themselves from the social class of interest. It seems clear then that such consumers will refrain from buying an atypical looking high-end product, since it would have lower status signaling power. Sustainable versions of a luxury product might be perceived as an atypical and decrease purchase intention for those.

4 Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses

Previous literature indicates a widespread belief that green products have a lower overall performance than conventional alternatives (Olson 2013). This belief is magnified in the luxury context. Luxury consumers are highly skeptical about the quality of green items introduced by luxury brands, especially, but not exclusively, in relation to the usage of recycled material (Achabou and Dekhili 2013); indeed, such items are perceived as lower quality compared to the luxury brand’s other products (Griskevicius et al. 2010; Magnoni and Roux 2012; Achabou and Dekhili 2013).

Furthermore, several other findings demonstrate that luxury buyers have an ambivalent attitude when it comes to the purchase of luxury sustainable products because they consider luxury and sustainability to be somewhat contradictory concepts, especially with regard to the social and economic harmony facet of sustainable development (Kapferer and Michaut-Denizeau 2014). In fact, the research indicated while investors nowadays are demanding greater disclosure of a firm’s investments in greenhouse gas reductions, renewable energy, and energy efficiencies, luxury brands are reluctant to become more transparent about their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performances (Janssen et al. 2017). The reason is the existing conflict between corporate social responsibility activities and the archetypal brand concepts found among the marketing of luxury brands (Torelli et al. 2012). Brand concepts can automatically activate their related motivations and goals without consumers’ conscious knowledge (Chartrand et al. 2008). Torelli et al. (2012) suggest that luxury brands employ concepts of self-enhancement over people and resources, whereas prototypical CSR activities focus more on self-transcendence concepts, leading consumers to feel motivational conflict and the accompanying subjective experiences of disfluency. CSR cues of a luxury brand lead to the devaluation of these brands on account of the disfluency between the self-enhancement of the luxury brand and the self-transcendence values of CSR information.

The overall effect of consumers’ skepticism and deeply rooted set of instantaneous associations with the concept of “luxury” leads the consumer to be less inclined to the purchase of sustainable luxury products, rather than sustainable mainstream ones due to their inability to overlap the concepts of sustainability and luxury. Based on this contradiction of concepts (sustainability and brand values) which is far less marked in sustainable mainstream brands, we infer that the consumer is less skeptical in the (green) claims of mainstream brands rather than in those of luxury brands and is therefore more willing to buy sustainable mainstream products, as opposed to sustainable luxury products. Therefore, we hypothesize that consumers’ attitude toward a new sustainable product and purchase intention is higher when that product is produced by a mainstream brand.

H1:

a) Consumers’ attitude toward a new sustainable product and b) purchase intention is higher when that product is produced by a mainstream brand compared to a luxury brand.

According Holmes et al. (2002), consumers are more willing to engage in sustainable purchases when this action is followed by some benefit to the self. This statement is especially true when applied to Western societies, where individualistic consumer traits (e.g., narcissism and self-esteem) are increasing and where, therefore, conflicts arise ever more often between consumers’ pursuit of individual, short-term, self-directed goals and their support for collective, long-term, and socially oriented interests (Naderi and Strutton 2015). Naderi and Strutton (2015) in their paper portray American society as an utterly un-idealistic place in which high percentages of consumers routinely behave narcissistically (Twenge 2006) and relatively few routinely make choices that support sustainable outcomes (Bonini and Oppenheim 2008a, b; Scarborough Research 2010) out of goodness of their heart. In further support of this thesis, a generalized attitude toward self-appeals is also confirmed in the European context by an exploratory research (Cervellon and Shammas 2013) that shows how in Southern Europe (Italy, France), the purchase of “green” products is centered around individual incentives. Moreover, according to the study on the relationship between self-concept and advertising effectiveness, self-benefit appeals can be expected to play a central role in influencing green advertising effectiveness (Sirgy 1986) because they’re often better tailored to match consumers’ self-concept (a mental, subjective picture representing oneself). Indeed, the paper states that advertising appeals congruent with viewers’ self-concept are superior in terms of enhancing advertising effectiveness to incongruent ones, independently from how morally impactful or symbolic the advertising should otherwise be. The three researchers, in fact, ascertain that if the symbol of a product (a subjective meaning assigned to an object) does not tie in closely with one’s self image, it may have little influence on purchasing behavior, irrespective of its potential symbolic richness. It is also argued that selfishness may be crucial to successful purchasing behavior and may produce greater economic welfare than pervasive collectivism (Palmer 2002).

In conclusion, consumers might be more willing to engage in sustainable purchases when this action is followed by some benefit to the self, that is, when the advertising message is self-benefit oriented rather than others-benefit oriented.

H2:

a) Consumers’ attitude toward a new sustainable product b) purchase intention is higher when the advertising message is focused on a “self-benefit,” rather than “others-benefit.”

In general, the framing of a claim or message influences attitude (Green and Peloza 2014). Consumers’ reactions to green products vary by product type (Bezawada and Pauwels 2013; Van Doorn and Verhoef 2011).

Rothschild (1979) suggests a self-benefit appeal is often necessary for enacting change among consumers to behave in situations where a social or environmental good is generated. In addition, Peattie (2001) argues environmentally friendly products that save consumers’ money succeed with relative ease even if their environmental benefits are marginal. Further to this point, Allen (1982) suggests that, in the case of consumer conservation, “saving money represents a strong alternative motive for efficient consumption that has nothing to do with social conscience.” Due to the fact that consumers want to save their money even when they are engaged in green consumption, without considering factors as social status and quality, they are more willing to buy products from mainstream brands in contrast with luxury brands.

In addition, there’s a widespread belief that green products have a lower overall performance than conventional alternatives (Lin and Chang 2012). This belief is magnified in the luxury context, with luxury consumers expressing skepticism about the quality of green items introduced by luxury brands, especially, but not exclusively, in relation to the usage of recycled material (Achabou and Dekhili 2013); indeed, such items might be perceived as lower quality compared to the luxury brand’s other products (e.g., Achabou and Dekhili 2013; Griskevicius et al. 2010; Magnoni and Roux 2012).

Building on this statement and on the previously mentioned papers that reported how effective the usage of self-benefit appeals is on enhancing the attitude of consumers toward making a purchase, we hypothesize that the message framing also plays a moderating effect between consumers’ reactions to a sustainable new product and brand type.

H3:

Message appeal type is a moderating effect between brand type and a) attitude toward a new sustainable product b) purchase intention. When the message is “self-benefit” focus, consumers’ reactions toward a sustainable new product increase for a mainstream brand. When the message is “others-benefit” focus, consumers’ reactions toward a sustainable new product increase for a luxury brand.

The conceptual model was indicated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
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Conceptual model

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5 Method

The primary goal of this paper was to determine what is the right shade of advertising messages for a sustainable new product. In our study we test purchase intention of a sustainable new product, and we hypothesized that consumers will more positively evaluate sustainable new product by a mainstream brand compared to a luxury brand. In addition, self-benefit appeal will be more effective than others-benefit appeal. Finally, more importantly, we want to examine whether appeal type makes any difference in effectiveness of sustainable product advertising when the brand type changes.

5.1 Pretest

A pretest was conducted in Italy to select the brands and message content to use in the main test scenarios. The sample consists of total 46 subjects, 30 females and 16 males, with an average age of 27.43 (SD = 11.63). The manipulation of appeal message type was measured on a self- versus others-benefit scale used in White and Peloza (2009).

The respondents assessed the message of scenarios as a self- versus others-benefit oriented. A reliability test was conducted on multi-item scales before statistical tests of manipulation checks and they found to be reliable (αself-benefit = 0.63 and αothers-benefit = 0.73). The statistical test of manipulation check was successful: means were significantly different (Mothers-benefit = 4.17, Mself-benefit = 3.14, t (44) = 2.25, p < 0.05).

Additionally, respondents rated ten selected brands, “Desigual, Lacoste, H&M, OVS, Gucci, Nike, Polo, Zara, Louis Vuitton, and Prada,” in terms of luxuriousness and mainstreamness, 1 indicating the most luxurious (1) and 10 indicating the most mainstream. While the brand which was perceived as the highest mainstream was H&M (M = 9.63, SD = 0.88), the brand which was perceived as the highest luxurious one was Louis Vuitton (M = 1.83, SD = 1.34) (Fig. 2). Louis Vuitton was not selected because its design was too recognizable for the purpose of the main experiment since the image used in the luxury and mainstream scenario needed to be the same. So, another brand with a high luxurious perception and not easily recognizable by design (anonymized here) and a brand with a high mainstream brand perception (anonymized here) were selected to use in main experiment.

Fig. 2
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Consumers’ brand perceptions of ten brands in the pretest data using ten-point likert scale (10 indicates the most mainstream brand; 1 indicates the most luxurious one)

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5.2 Main Test

An experiment was prepared using a 2 (brand type: luxury vs mainstream) by 2 (message appeal: self- vs others-benefit) between-subjects design. Respondents have been randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions and asked to complete an online survey.

The manipulation was conducted by presenting a product, changing the brand displayed and the advertisement text. The self-benefit message was manipulated with the message: “Do not stay behind, do the right thing, follow the fashion: look great, feel good, be conscious.” The others-benefit message was “Our commitment to sustainability goes far beyond regulatory compliance or minimizing the environmental effect of our business practices. Our vision is to build sustainability into everything we do, so that our profitable growth will help restore the planet.” Since messages were tested at the pretest and found to be successful manipulation of self- and others-benefit, we did not test again. Both luxury and mainstream brand that were selected are starting to pay attention to green production, with a core focus on green product sourcing, manufacturing, and disposal. Besides, both companies have bags and shoes in their product portfolio.

5.2.1 Sample Descriptives

Data was collected in Italy and the total number of responses collected was 295. After deleting incomplete and inconsistent responses, sample size reduced to 191. The number of respondents per conditions ranged from 34 to 42; minimum 34 was for luxury with others-benefit condition and maximum 42 was for luxury with self-benefit condition.

The age range of people who answered was from 15 to 70 years with an average age of 27 years (M = 27.06, SD = 10.71), the majority being women (61.8%). The average monthly spending was stated as 195.41 euros (SD = 544.70). The sample consisted of mainly students (64.4%), employed (13.1%), self-employed (10.5%), and others (11.15%). Participants were asked to compare a sustainable product to non-sustainable one in terms of value, performance, durability, and quality using a seven-point Likert scale. The lowest score was for quality (M = 3.82, SD = 1.71), and durability was the second (M = 3.85, SD = 1.57). The highest positive evaluation was value (M = 4.52, SD = 1.68) and performance was the second highest (M = 4.13, SD = 1.63). The average environmental consciousness was 3.87 (SD = 1.56) out of seven-point scale which cannot be accepted as a very high value.

5.2.2 Procedure and Measures

The product in the experiment scenarios was different between men and women. A pair of shoes for men and a bag for women were selected to be more relevant to respondents. Respondents were randomly assigned to one out of four conditions (Table 1). As stated above, the product pictures were created considering neutral characteristics, looking like they could belong to both the luxury and mainstream categories of goods with no specific reference to existing bags or shoes in the market.

Table 1 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design
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After reading the scenarios about the products, participants were asked to give an evaluation of their knowledge and frequency of purchase of the brand they saw. All measures were borrowed from the previous literature, measured with seven-point Likert scale anchored with 1 indicating strongly disagree and 7 indicating strongly agree (Table 2). The dependent variable “purchase intention (Pint)” was measured with a purchase intention scale of Dodds et al. (1991). As an alternative dependent variable, attitude toward the product scale (AttProduct) was adapted from literature because purchase intention might depend on a consumer’s budget. Both scales were found to be reliable in the sample (αPInt = 0.92; αAttProduct = 0.81 after eliminating the second item).

Table 2 Measurement items and source of the scales
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Consumers’ perceptions of message strength was also measured with the scale developed by Wheeler et al. (2005) and found to be reliable, α = 0.82. Previous research indicated that environmentally conscious consumers place a primary emphasis on the product’s green benefits instead of other benefits and use greater number of green products (Lin and Chang 2012). To control the effect of sensitivity toward environmental issues, three-item scale of concern for the environment was measured (Haws et al. 2014; α = 0.86). To measure perceptions of quality comparison between a sustainable and a non-sustainable product, four-item scale of De Angelis et al. (2017) was adapted and found to be reliable 0.73.

5.3 Results

To examine difference in message strength (i.e., persuasive power) across conditions to confirm internal validity, one-way ANOVA was conducted using average message strength as a dependent and conditions as an independent variable. There was no difference in message strength across four scenarios (F(3, 154) = 1.19, p = 0.32).

Hypotheses were tested for both dependent variables, namely, “attitude toward a new product” and “purchase intention.” Two-way ANOVA was conducted, by introducing brand type (1, mainstream; 0, luxury) as an independent variable, message type (1, self-oriented; 0, others-oriented) as a moderator variable, and environmental concern as a control variable.

Independent variables explained sufficiently attitude toward a sustainable new product because model is significant (F(4, 153) = 7.44, p < 0.001). There was a significant interaction between brand and message appeal type on attitude toward a new product (F(1, 153) = 5.95, p < 0.05). Thus, message type is a moderating effect between brand type and attitude toward the product. The interaction effect was shown in Fig. 3. When the message type is others-benefit, respondents who were exposed to the luxury good scenario have a more positive attitude toward the new product than people who were exposed to the mainstream good one (Mothers, luxury = 4.65, Mothers, mainstream = 3.76). However, there is less difference in attitude toward a new product for brand type when the message type is self-benefit (Mself, luxury = 4.14, Mself, mainstream = 4.07). The interaction effect showed that the others-benefit appeal was the most successful with luxury brands which is opposite of the direction of H3a. There was no difference in attitude toward a new product when self-benefit appeal was used for both luxury and mainstream brands. The main effect of brand type was also statistically significant (F(1, 153) = 7.12, p < 0.01), but not the message type (F(1, 153) = 0.35, p = 0.56). Attitude toward a sustainable new product for a luxury brand was significantly higher than the one for a mainstream brand (F(1, 153) = 7.12, p < 0.01; Mluxury = 4.37, Mmainstream = 3.91). There was no significant difference in self- and others-benefit message appeal (F(1, 153) = 0.35, p = 0.56; Mself = 4.11, Mothers = 4.16). Thus, H1a and H2a were not confirmed.

Fig. 3
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Moderating effect of message type on attitude toward sustainable new product

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Two-way ANOVA was also conducted using purchase intention as a dependent variable. Two-way interaction between message type and brand type was almost marginally significant. Environmental consciousness was added as a covariate and two-way ANCOVA results were reported. The model was significant (F(7, 150) = 3.68, p < 0.01). The three-way interaction between environmental consciousness, brand type, and message type were significant (F(1, 150) = 8.33, p < 0.01). Thus, when consumers are more environmentally conscious, purchase intention of a sustainable new product by a mainstream brand has higher mean than the one by a luxury brand when the advertising message is self-benefit oriented (Fig. 4). This result is opposite of the findings for the attitude toward sustainable new product. While others-benefit decreased purchase intention of a sustainable new product by a mainstream brand, it increased purchase intention of a sustainable new product by a luxury brand. Besides, two-way interaction between message type and brand type was still significant (F(1, 150) = 4.24, p < 0.05). So, H3b was confirmed. The highest purchase intention of a sustainable new product was for a mainstream brand with self-benefit message appeal (Mself, mainstream = 3.19, Mself, luxury = 2.38, Mothers, mainstream = 3.02, Mothers, luxury = 2.81). Furthermore, we examined the significance area of environmental consciousness values using Model 3 (i.e., three-way interaction) with SPSS PROCESS macro (Hayes 2018). The results indicated that when the environmental consciousness was larger than 4.02 (out of seven-point Likert scale), the effect of self-benefit message for a mainstream brand on purchase intention increases (Fig. 5). There were no main effect of brand type and message type. So, H1b and H2 b were not confirmed.

Fig. 4
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Moderating effect of message type on purchase intention of a sustainable new product

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Fig. 5
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Johnson-Neyman plot for purchase intention (significant positive effects are in the area when environmental concern exceeds 4.02. Thus, when the confidence interval does not include 0)

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Environmental conspicuousness has a significant positive effect on attitude toward a sustainable new product (F(1, 153) = 20.99, p < 0.001) and on purchase intention of a sustainable new product (F(1, 150) = 10.56, p < 0.01).

We repeated the same analysis for advertising attitude as a dependent variable and the findings were the same. We indicate the significant moderating effect in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
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Moderating effect of message type on advertising attitude

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6 Conclusions

The results of the experiment supported that the framing of the communication plays a crucial role to reach consumers and influence their attitudes (Green and Peloza 2014). Moreover, it also influences their purchase intention. The moderating effect of message type was confirmed; however, the findings indicate different directions for attitude toward a sustainable new product and purchase intention of a sustainable new product. The others-benefit appeal was the most successful with luxury brands to increase attitude toward a new product, while the self-benefit appeal seems to be the most effective with mainstream brands to increase purchase intention. This result is in line with the findings of Holmes et al. (2002): consumers are more willing to engage in sustainable purchases of mainstream brands when this action is followed by some benefit to the self.

Consumer’s attitude toward a sustainable new product is greater for a luxury brand than a mainstream one; however, interestingly purchase intention is the opposite effect. This result might be caused by the research sample. The sample in the experiment was relatively young with an average age of 27 which were not potential luxury buyers for today. However, they are potential luxury buyers in future after they make progress in their careers and life-cycle stage. Besides, young consumers are more environmentally conscious compare to older consumers. Our findings indicate that environmental consciousness positively influences the purchase intention and attitude toward a sustainable product.

Additionally, a sustainable product was evaluated lower than non-sustainable version; mean values for quality, value, durability, and performance perceptions were not very high. This is somewhat in line with Achabou and Dekhili (2013). Consumers might still have skepticism about the quality of “sustainable” goods, even if it is introduced by a luxury brand (Achabou and Dekhili 2013).

The theoretical contribution of this study to the sustainability in fashion is twofold. This research contributes (1) to the comprehension of the perception of the sustainability with respect to brand type (mainstream vs luxury) and (2) to the indication of the influence of message framing (self- vs others-benefit) on consumers’ reactions toward sustainable new products.

This research provides insights on how to create the most efficient advertising appeals for a sustainable new product launched by a mainstream and luxury brand. Based on the findings, managers should focus less on the attention to environmental (or social) issues but more on self-benefit when the sustainable new product is for a mainstream brand, whereas for a luxury brand, it could be more beneficial to focus on others-benefit message.

The limitations of this research may provide avenues for future research. This research was conducted in Italy with strictly Italian respondents. In the Italian market, luxury brands are often connected to an idea of heritage and craftsmanship. This concept is present in past research that suggests that individual drivers to the purchase of sustainable luxury might be central in several cultures (Southern Europe), while collective environmental and social drivers might be determinant in Canada and in the UK (Cervellon and Shammas 2013). Future research could reexamine the findings of this research in different countries to explore the differences “across the borders.” This study only investigated self- and others-benefit appeal. There are many different appeals that should be examined further such as gain versus loss message framing. This study used an experiment, but there is further research needed to explore consumer’s sustainable purchase behaviors in a real-life situation.