CSR Communication: a promotional tool or a portrayal of the reality? : An explorative study in the apparel and footwear industry

The fashion industry is a recurring topic in the media, especially regarding the responsibility the fashion companies should take, which has created skepticism from stakeholders. This skepticism is based on that the stakeholders do not know what the companies do concerning corporate social responsibility and the companies communicate CSR with the hope of creating legitimacy on the market. How apparel and footwear communicate their CSR efforts and their performances in self-assessed tools compared to their actual efforts have not been researched before, hence the purpose of this thesis. The purpose of this research is to map and analyze how apparel and footwear companies communicate CSR efforts in comparison to their claimed CSR performance. This in order to reach a better understanding of how apparel and footwear companies communicate their CSR efforts how consistent they are with their self-assessed performance they communicate to their stakeholders. Content analyses have been conducted on the sample, which contained 59 companies in the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). First, the content analysis has been performed on communication channels used by the sample when communicating CSR and the claimed CSR performances been collected from the Higg Index. The sustainability efforts in comparison to the performances have been analyzed based on a discourse analysis on five of the chattiest companies in SAC, which was performed after the content analysis in order to create a mixed method approach. This study has presented how frequently apparel and footwear companies communicate their CSR efforts and performances. It has also shown what channels primarily used when communicating CSR and how they choose to prioritize their performances. Additionally, the result and analysis in this study have shown that the most talkative companies in SAC, namely H&M, Inditex, Patagonia, PVH and Salomon, communicate quality in their available sustainability information. The way they all incorporate CSR in their business model is also a way of showing dedication and perhaps even quality in their sustainability efforts and claimed performances.