Roberta Pezzetti

The growing convergence of digital transformation and sustainability is reshaping value creation across industries, particularly in the fashion sector, where the transition towards circular business models has become increasingly important. Although research on circular economy, digital transformation, and servitization has expanded considerably, limited attention has been devoted to how digitally enabled service systems support circular value creation during the post-purchase stage of the product lifecycle. This study examines how digital servitization is operationalised within the fashion ecosystem through a qualitative, theory-informed multiple-case study based on systematic website content analysis of 14 Italian B Corp organisations. It proposes a dual-cycle analytical framework comprising a Product–Service–Product (P-S-P) material loop and a Service–Product–Service (S-P-S) information loop, representing complementary mechanisms of material recirculation and digitally enabled lifecycle information exchange. The findings indicate that digital servitization is more frequently operationalised through material-oriented service mechanisms than through digitally enabled lifecycle information infrastructures, suggesting uneven development of the two complementary architectures. Observable implementation also differs across value chain positions, with downstream organisations exhibiting more customer-facing lifecycle service configurations, whereas upstream actors primarily contribute through enabling capabilities that are only partially captured by the framework. The study contributes by introducing an analytical framework that distinguishes complementary material and informational mechanisms of digital servitization, providing an exploratory basis for analysing observable circular service configurations across the fashion value chain.

The retail sector, under the pressure of digitalization and technological innovation, has experienced profound changes in the last decade, and retailers have had to cope with these changes by implementing new business models and competitive strategies with the aim of satisfying the consumers’ needs. In the last few decades, the sector has been affected by different new trends, from the birth of supermarkets to the advent of e-commerce, up to the introduction of cashierless stores. The latter represents a new category of store that is totally computer-based and digitalized, in which the use of cameras, sensors and self-shelves minimizes human interaction. Amazon pioneered this emerging concept, with the launch of Amazon Go, but other start-up companies are rapidly entering the cashierless retail market and embracing the challenge. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the knowledge of Italian consumers of cashierless shops, and the relevance of different factors related to this new kind of shops. A questionnaire was sent to a sample of more than 1000 consumers to identify and evaluate the actual situation and knowledge of this phenomenon, which is not yet diffuse in Italy. A statistical analysis, regarding both their knowledge about cashierless stores and the customer experience, is provided to discuss the most relevant factors affecting the customers’ perceptions and attitudes, with a comparison per gender and type of users. The results of the provided analysis reveal that the phenomenon is very little known, and this is certainly influenced by the lack of these stores in Italy.

The paper aims to analyse an increasingly problem connected with the generation of waste created along the entire food industry chain and transform it in an opportunity. The reuse of this waste to produce fashion items it gives new life to the waste itself. This is the principle of the circular economy. In order to be competitive companies are today facing the needs to change the entire production model by trying to extract the maximum value that each resource has at its disposal, avoiding the creation of waste. The shift from the linear model to the circular one needs social and economic instruments that regulate its functioning as well as the sensitization of the entire social system. The transition to this circular model has become of fundamental importance and one can no longer afford to procrastinate. In the research particular attention is paid on the possibilities of recovering by-products, through the analysis of 5 best practices: Orange Fiber, Duedilatte, Vegea, Piñatex and S. Café. The paper investigates the innovation in fashion industry using waste from food in order to transform what is considered waste into a new resource creating value. The paper hast two main research questions: - How to reduce the impact of pollution creating by the food industry with the help of fashion industry? - What is the contribution of food and fashion industries to the circular economy? Food and fashion, apparently so far apart, are today collaborating more and more in creating new value, helping our planet to reach sustainable long-lasting goals. At the same time, they are promoting a fundamental shift from traditional fashion to sustainable fashion, able to apply the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle for offering to consumers new opportunities for a sustainable approach to fashion demand.

The paper aims at investigating the impact of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 on Italian “public interest entities” both in term of approaches to non-financial disclosure and on business strategies. The analysis focuses on the investigation of the relationships between the 17 SDGs and the set of non-financial information defined in bont the EU Directive 2014/95/EU and the related Italian L.D. n. 254 of 30 December 2016. SDGs has been significantly analysed in the literature, considering the effects on sustainability policies adopted by the States, but little attention has been paid to the policies adopted by companies. The awareness of companies towards the business implication connected to the achievemt of these goals translate into a new conscientious path, in compliance with sustainability standards. In this framework, the paper investigates the entire population of Italian companies subject to the publishing of non-financial information disclosure, with the exclusion of banks and insurance companies. For each company under investigation, two kinds of analysis are presented: (1) firstly, the company’s level of sustainability derived from the company website; (2) the approach in pursuing the 17 SDGs. The overall results are quite comforting in term of companies’ sustainability aptitude. Over the years, Italian public interest entities have implemented active policies linked to the achievement of some specific goals, in compliance with the Italian legislation, although divergences still emerge among the Italian areas, as a result of cultural differences that still exist and affect companies’ approaches to sustainability issues. In this regard, the results of the analysis are interesting for government authorities to regulat the pursuit of sustainability goals.

The significant changes which have occurred in the competitive scenario in which fashion companies operate, combined with deep transformation in the lifestyles of final consumers, translate into the need to redefine the business models. Starting from a general overview of the emerging trends today affecting the fashion industry, the paper will devote particular attention to the analysis of the most important phenomena that are influencing this market and the drivers for long-lasting competitiveness: sustainability and attention to the so-called circular economy. According to the literature, from the consumer behavior’s point of view, the younger generations are paying growing attention to these issues. In light of these considerations, this paper aimed to analyze how sustainability and circular economy principles are influencing the perception of the fashion world among the new generations of consumers. After mapping the emerging trends in the fashion industry and analyzing the role of sustainability from both the demand and supply side, this paper presents the results of a survey conducted through an anonymous questionnaire made in collaboration with Insubria University. The results of the survey describe the students’ behaviour as regards fashion’s emerging trends, with particular attention to sustainability issues and the application of circular economy principles. The survey results were analyzed from both a descriptive and quantitative point of view with the aim to check the different perceptions as regards sustainable fashion and circular economy in fashion, focusing mainly on the so-called Generation Z. The results of the analysis proved to be consistent with the theoretical framework and confirm the relevance of sustainability issues in the fashion industry today in driving the demand of Generation Z, by considering a gender perspective. Moreover, the circular economy is descriptively analyzed with the aim to understand the relevance of the different facets for the entire sample of respondents.

By gliding sustainability into the mainstream areas of marketing strategy, the purpose of the current research is to analyze the influence of the entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability on relational marketing practices—i.e., interaction versus network marketing. Placed within a comparative setup, the investigation included a sample of 104 business owners of Romanian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the services sector, the selection of participants being subject to well-defined pre-established criteria. Acknowledging the research gap which addresses the type of business strategy fit for entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability, the conceptual model integrated a categorical moderator variable (Planned/Emergent Business Strategies) as indicative of the potential heterogeneity among the hypothesized relationships. Both measurement and structural models were appraised by means of a structural equation modeling technique, respectively, component-based partial least squares (PLS-SEM). As the findings concluded, the entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability accounts for almost 35% of variance in interaction marketing practices and 16% of variance in network marketing practices, thus positing a higher influence on the former. Moreover, evidence was provided that the reification of the entrepreneurs’ orientation towards sustainability in relational marketing practices was not significantly dependent on the type of business strategy.

The advent of the digital economy and, implicitly, of competition in the online marketplace has triggered new challenges in terms of consumer protection approaches. Online, consumer skills are expected to be improved and the level of consumer awareness and engagement increased. These are the baseline prerequisites of the sustainable purchasing decision and, thus, should be considered as pillars of responsible online consumption. Consistent with the novel consumption challenges, the current paper is intended to advance and test a research model integrating five main constructs, namely, competition in the online marketplace, online consumer skills, online consumer awareness, online consumer engagement and sustainable purchasing decision. A total of 318 college students—a representative population of the new Millennials generation—accepted the invitation to participate in a questionnaire-based survey. In order to pertinently analyze the collected data, a structural equation modeling technique based on partial least squares was employed for the assessment of the measurement and the structural model. The findings indicated that the model explained 24.4 percent of the variance of sustainable purchasing decisions, while the highest influence was exerted by the improvement of online consumer skills. This implies that online providers should revisit their products sustainability standards on purpose to preserve a competitive advantage.