GREENWASHING IN FAST FASHION BEAST, SHEIN’S, COMMUNICATIONS? — A CONTENT ANALYSIS

Last Modified

Creator

Abstract

The aim of this thesis project is to contribute to the understanding of corporate social responsibility, greenwashing, and influencer marketing within the fast fashion industry. While SHEIN implements corporate social responsibility strategies, there are issues and possible cases of greenwashing including the sin of hidden tradeoff, vagueness, lesser of two evils, and fibbing. Due to the lack of publicly available data and transparency, it is difficult to discern the true reality of greenwashing for SHEIN. Additionally, SHEIN uses influencer marketing on TikTok, which fuels constant desire for trendy clothing and consumption. This use also increases brand and product awareness and can even have a possible subsequent impact on sales, revenue and consumption. Overall, SHEIN and other companies will need to implement balancing acts to 1) balance consumers’ sustainability demands with communications about those efforts to avoid greenwashing and 2) balance influencer marketing impact with corporate social responsibility impact. Furthermore, for honest and complete corporate social responsibility strategies, SHEIN should increase transparency as majority of the recommendations in this thesis involve increasing transparency. Increased transparency will allow consumers to better understand their purchases and compel SHEIN to become even more accountable for business operations.

Date of publication

Keyword

DOI

Resource type

Rights statement

Advisor

Degree

Graduation year

Language

Relations

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Visibility	Actions
	Medina_Sascha-MA_Thesis_FINA_accessible.pdf	2023-02-17	Public	Download
	2022_Medina_Sascha_thesis_deliverable.pdf	2023-02-17	Public	Download