Phau, I., Teah, M., & Chuah, J. (2015), Consumer attitudes towards luxury fashion apparel made in sweatshops, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 19 (2), 169-187.

The motivation of this study is to let more people have more understanding on how consumer attitudes play a significant role in luxury fashion apparel which was made in sweatshops in the developing countries. And also can use the hypothesis extension to population, not only in Australia, but also for other countries of different socioeconomic groups which may produce different results.

The benefits are high profits and low price for production. This article reports that only 1% of apparel production practices "ethically made apparel" of the 1 trillion global fashion industry. This means that there is a huge sustainability problem in the fashion industry that needs to be addressed. Also, the increasing apparel consumer demands also increase the demand for consumer information for ethical manufacturing practices from fashion companies. This make more people recognized that ethical branding strategy should be utilized in the future to maintain sustainable development in the society.

The framework used in this article was Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), to examine consumers' attitudes towards luxury fashion apparel brands made in sweatshops.

In this quantitative article, the authors gathered data by conducting a "mall intercept" self-administered questionnaire. They did this by preparing the interviewer and approaching every fifth person who passed by the mall entrance. The data collection was over a period of three weeks, both during weekdays and weekends. Out of 260 questionnaires, 63 were incomplete and eliminated and only 197 were used for analysis using SPSS software. % were male, 51% were female and the majority of respondents were ages 21-35, with earnings less than $15,000/yr.

The survey instrument used was a seven-point Likert Scale to measure and analyze how attitudes(3 dimensional), social norms (3 dimensional), and perceived behavioral control- 1 dimensional (PBC) affect "intention not to purchase luxury branded apparel made in sweatshops" and how significant it is towards "Willingness to pay more for luxury branded apparel not made in sweatshops".

From all 17 Hypothesis, eight were found supported (H1b, H3b, H3a, H2a, H6b, H8a, H8b, and H9) and 9 were not supported (H1a, H2b, H4a, H5a, H6a, H7a, H4b, H5b, and H7b).

After looking over the 17 hypothesis, some of the practical implications of this article may be that consumers who are aware of luxury brands who use sweatshops are willing pay a higher price for luxury items not made in sweatshops. This can lead to luxury brands having an option to implement "super-premium" prices and also may be able to create an "exclusiveness" of the luxury brand and strategically create a niche-market.

The limitations of this study could be that the sample population was too small, authors could have gathered more data by staying longer than 3 weeks, or by not waiting until the fifth person to walk in through the doors. The sample was not representative of the general population because the majority of respondents were probably not aware of the issue at hand (Phau et al, 2014).

Questions:

Would you say awareness of consumers' attitudes is enough to have a positive affect human rights?