Consumers Perceive Fashion as Consumables - The Effective Concept to Bring Fashion Back as Semi-Durable Goods is 'Sustained Comfort'

While the rise of fast fashion has brought tremendous convenience to consumers, environmental degradation is a concern. An analysis of fashion loyalty factors revealed that while comfort, design, and affordability are emphasized, durability is not. In other words, consumers tend to perceive fashion as 'consumables'. To balance economic growth and environmental considerations, value creation that brings fashion back to being semi-durable goods is required. Conventional sustainability has appealed to the protection of the environment and human rights, but this is a social value, and it is difficult for individual consumers to feel its worth. Therefore, to convert this into consumer value, this research proposed 'sustained comfort'. As a result of the verification, this concept proved significantly more attractive than conventional sustainability or fast fashion. For the widespread adoption of ethical consumption, it is desirable not to directly appeal to environmental consideration or waste reduction, but to promote products whose comfort, such as texture, which is the source of consumer value, is sustained, positioning it as a contribution to waste reduction as a result. This achievement, a joint research by NEC and Associate Professor Takumi Kato of the School of Commerce at Meiji University, has been accepted at the 2026 International Conference on Management, Tourism and Technologies and will be published in Business and Economics (Springer).

Source: Kato, T., Hattori, A., Tamura, C., Kajihara, F., Takatsuka, K., Chiba, Y. (2026). The new sustainability concept in the fashion industry: Reinventing the sustainability in the fast fashion era. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer.

Key points of this research
- Consumers show a stance of valuing awareness of corporate social responsibility, but in reality, they tend not to translate it into purchasing behavior. This tendency is observed in many industries and is common in the fashion industry as well. Fast fashion, which is inexpensive and offers abundant choices, has grown rapidly. On the other hand, the spread of cheap fast fashion has spawned mass consumption and mass disposal, raising concerns about the worsening of environmental problems.
- As shown in Figure 1, Study 1 analyzed the factors of fashion loyalty through covariance structure analysis based on an online survey of 600 Japanese women. The results showed that comfort had the strongest positive effect, followed by design and economy. On the other hand, sustainability (environmental protection and human rights protection) showed a negative effect on loyalty. Furthermore, despite fashion being a semi-durable good, it was confirmed that durability did not have a significant effect. In short, this suggests a concern that consumers are beginning to treat fashion as 'consumables'.
- To balance economic growth and environmental consideration, value creation that pulls fashion back to being a semi-durable good is required. Conventional sustainability has appealed to environmental and human rights protection, but this is an altruistic motive, making it hard for consumers to perceive its value. To promote ethical consumption, which is the act of purchasing environmentally and human-rights conscious products, it is necessary to convert ethical characteristics into consumer value based on selfish motives.
- The results of Study 1 indicate that in fashion, comfort such as texture is