Circularity in Indian Fashion Brands: Perspectives and Digital Branding Orientations

The fashion industry has witnessed the emergence of new concepts and trends that can be attributed to changing consumer psyche, technological advancements, and rising environmental concerns. The climate change debate and consequences of traditional linear business models surface the negative impact of the fashion industry. Most of the fashion businesses today work on this model that embraces a take-make-waste rationale with more than half of it resulting in landfills. The need to implement the restorative and regenerative circular economy model is strongly becoming evident for inducing practices of repair, recycling, or repurposing to extend product life cycle and incorporating renewable energy resources and precision technologies to optimize resource usage. Discussions surrounding sustainability have impacted various dimensions of businesses including branding. Branding, as the most valuable intangible asset of the company, serves as a marker for the offerings of a firm and has a crucial role in communication. Digital branding has come of age with the intriguing and ever-expanding spread of websites, apps, social media, video, and other digital content. Through digital branding, brands aim to create stronger connections between consumers and the products or services being delivered. Keeping pace with the digital transformation, Indian fashion brands are also pitching forward with remodeled marketing practices from physical storefronts to digital touchpoints. The fashion sector, with its considerable size, has major implications for sustainability, which is reflected through responsible products, processes, and marketing communications. An important research direction is to examine the understanding and employment that the Indian brands have of the concept of ‘sustainability’ in general, and ‘circularity’ in particular. The orientation of branding toward sustainability and circularity seems to be a crucial inquiry to comprehend how and to what extent brands are using these concepts for consumer awareness, motivation, and acceptance of sustainable fashion products, or simply to generate awareness of sustainability and circularity paradigm. This chapter presents the dominant interpretations of sustainability and circularity in the context of Indian fashion brands and examines how they are employed in brand communication to nudge pro-environment behavior among consumers and promote products.