Green Practices among Fashion Manufacturers: Relationship with Cultural Innovativeness and Perceived Benefits

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine green practices implemented among fashion manufacturers and identify factors that drive the adoption of those practices, specifically focusing on a company’s cultural innovativeness and the perceived benefits of green innovations. An online survey was created containing both open-ended and multiple-choice questions using Likert scales. Data were gathered from 29 fashion manufacturers that were identified by the Google search engine and then approached. Qualitative data were analyzed to obtain insights into fashion manufacturers’ green practices and a cluster analysis was conducted to categorize companies into distinct groups based on their level of green product innovations and green process innovations. Our findings suggest that the adoption of green practices was related to a company’s internal characteristics such as cultural innovativeness and social responsibility perceptions. Perceived benefits from green practices were not a sufficient motivator for adopting those practices. It is important to examine manufacturers’ perceptions of becoming more involved in green practices because they have great potential to make a positive impact on the mainstream industry and appeal to a wider market audience.

Keywords

• green innovations
• perceived benefit
• corporate cultural innovativeness
• fashion manufacturer