In a recently published consumer study 52% percent of U.K., U.S. and Canadian consumers believe that businesses’ alignments with social or charitable causes is only half hearted; 88% are suspicious whether the money is actually going to where promised; and over 75% state that companies do not disclose enough information about how the consumers’ and the corporations’ funds are allocated to and benefiting charitable or social causes.
In other words: consumers take it for granted that green-washing is the rule, rather than the exception. They have become outspoken cynics with regards to CSR and sustainability engagement of corporations, and few actually do believe what is written in publicly available information such as company and CSR reports. As far as the fashion industry is concerned, this does not come as a surprise, specifically in view of a continued series of scandals such as organic cotton mislabelling, toxic ‘organic’ cosmetics and repeat labour malpractices to just name a few.
Consumers expect the behaviour and sustainability efforts to be integral to a companies core business. Commitment to sustainability for mere public goodwill is clearly condemned. But how to distinguish the one from the other? The key is not only mere adherence to regulations and standards, but also to communicate this in a transparent and verifiable way in order to be, or become, credible in the public eye. This request for transparency and publicly rendered accounts will no doubt cause raised eyebrows among both, multinationals but also small, locally rooted companies.
Supply chain tracking – a marketing opportunity
The question is of course: what tools other than, or in addition to, legislation, certifications and consumer labels does the fashion industry have?
In essence, 3 approaches are widely considered: Standardised reporting (such as ISO 26’000); IT supported supply chain tracing (successfully used in e.g. Walmart’s fully traced jewellery line ‘Love, Earth’, the IOU project, or at Rapanui); and, very recently, a comprehensive 43 items ‘transparency’ questionnairee where all answers and supporting documentation will be made available in the public domain for critical stakeholder review.
Particularly supply chain tracking is, beyond transparency for the sheer sake of public reputation, is an interesting commercial tool and offers novel opportunities in marketing. For example:
- Goods can be assured to be authentic.
Every component and work step that has gone into the making of a product (a bag, a pair of trousers, a ring) is tracked. Hence, it can be guaranteed that the product is authentic and not a forgery.
While the popularity of cheap fake brand products is proof of a brand’s value, brands are very keen to ensure that the ‘real’ product can be identified and distinguished from even the most accomplished of all forgeries. As a side-effect of supply chain tracking, this becomes possible. - Products get a unique personality and story.
With supply chain tracking, and the fact that each component, ingredient and process step is recorded, the product can be given ‘a personality’.
The consumer can get to know when e.g. a bag was produced, from the cow the hide came from to the artisan who worked it and the location of the workshop or factory. It gives the impression as though even a mass produced consumer good were a unique bespoke creation
And let’s be honest: who doesn’t like to be the sole owner of a one off? - Customer relationship management.
It goes without saying, if the owner of a bag or branded pair of jeans wants access to the story of his or her item, online memberships to ‘exclusive’ information access would offer a text book opportunity to collect more detailed customer data: What age group? What other products of the same brand (old and new) does he/she own? What percentage of income is spent on a product?
It goes without saying that this reality is the data protection authorities nightmare, and ‘big brother’ no doubt is casting yet another shadow.
Cleverly used though, the opportunities that result from this type of data collection are endless. From a marketer’s perspective, the data is valuable, important, and highly cherished. Armed with this degree of insight, personalised and targeted campaigns can finally efficiently be realised.
Conclusion
In the past, signing up to any voluntary standard has often happened without much conviction and commitment by fashion companies. Sometimes even fore mere PR purposes. This applies notably, and very specifically to the fashion industry where calls for more transparency are old news, but are now finally backed up by an increasing number of consumers willing to pay more for their products if, and only if, they are guaranteed their money’s proper use.
From a consumer marketing perspective, traceable supply chains open the door to a dimension of information customisation and personalisation that so far has not been known or tested yet. From a one-on-one engagement with the customers over their individual purchases, to targeted marketing campaigns the potential it holds can only be imagined. And all that, while the supply chain fully transparent.
