What has affected the development of the ethical clothing market? A comparing qualitative research of the United Kingdom and Sweden

There is a growing interest for ethical consumption, in general as well as inthe clothing industry. The consumption of ethical clothes is a complexphenomenon though, where aspects such as quality, style, function, price,time assets, accessibility and ethical attitudes affect the decision making.Researches that have been executed show the diversities in developmentbetween different countries. There are fairly strong indications that theethical clothing market is more advanced in the United Kingdom than inSweden and therefore these two countries are objects of this research.The aim with this thesis is to describe and explain what have affected thedevelopment of the ethical clothing market in the United Kingdom comparedto Sweden. For that reason a qualitative approach has mainly been used,where deep interviews with people within the ethical clothing industry havecontributed to most of the empirical part. As a complement secondary datasuch as statistics of the two countries have been used in order to investigateour area.One useful tool, among others, to investigate the macro environment is theSLEPT model. With this model the surroundings are being evaluated withinthe areas of social/cultural, legal, economical, political and technologicalfactors. They influence differently on the possibility for new companies andbusinesses to operate and the factors can all together contribute to a betterunderstanding of the market environment. Population, income levels,Internet usage, political government and legislation regarding theenvironment and business are data that have been studied in this thesis.Sweden and the United Kingdom are rather similar when it comes toeconomical, political, legal and technological aspect, why the social/culturaldifferences are more distinct. The index of national culture, created byHofstede (2005) helps to explain some of the dissimilarities. The diversity inshort-term thinking, masculinity and individualism in the two countries maycontribute to an explanation of what have affected the development of theethical clothing market.Program: TextilekonomutbildningenUppsatsnivå: C