چكيده به لاتين
The customers of fashion clothing often seek products that give them a unique appearance to stand out. Their valuation of such products is at its highest at the beginning of the product’s launch and gradually decreases due to consumerism tendencies. For those products that benefit from exclusive features, this decline tends to be at a slower rate. Such exclusive features, however, may harm the environment or be of an ethically questionable nature. On the other hand, investing in many sustainability efforts to minimize the environmental impact, such as utilizing recycled polyesters could lead to decreasing customers’ valuation of the product. Consequently, it is of great importance to find sustainability strategies in the fashion industry in a way that will keep the customers’ valuation at a desirable level in the long run.
This paper investigates the dynamic interactions between a vegan leather fashion (VLF) manufacturer and various behaviors of the customers toward this sustainable product. To that end, this paper analyzes the dynamic interactions between sustainability and customer valuation through a differential game model with the purpose of maximizing the vegan leather fashion manufacturer’s profit in the long run; in doing so, we consider the positive and negative ramifications of sustainability strategies on customers’ valuations as well as the positive and negative impacts of demand on sustainability level. Contrary to the previous researches, this study considers the negative impact of using biodegradable and recycled materials on customer valuation as the manufacturer’s attempt to increase the sustainability level and consumerism’s effect on sustainability level.
This paper demonstrates that if the negative consumerism effects on the sustainability level are decreased, it would be profitable for the vegan leather fashion manufacturer to increase investment in the use of biodegradable and recycled materials. On the other hand, when the sustainability level decreases drastically over time, using recycled materials is not profitable for the manufacturer. Hence, the manufacturer should make a trade-off between profitability and sustainability level as a result. This study offers a more realistic approach to studying fashion products by considering the dynamic interactions between sustainability level and customers’ valuation and provides better insight into the long-term outcomes of the customers’ valuation on fashion manufacturers.
