Fashion Businesses and their Responsibilities: A Harm Chain Approach

Despite European consumers’ current disillusions with the labor and marketing practices of fashion brands, little attention has been given to the responsibilities of fashion businesses within the marketing literature. Using Polonsky et al.’s (2003) ‘harm chain’, and the extended harm-chain analysis later developed by Previte and Fry (2006), this paper examines the potential for value creation as well as harmful outcomes linked to fashion marketing activities, and how those harms might be addressed. This analysis redresses the knowledge gap in relation to negative and positive value creation, broadens the debate around CSR, and reconfigures research into fashion businesses by considering CSR in the context of the marketing of fashion brands. The conclusion suggests that fashion brands should sustain their success through ‘deep’ CSR, opening new frontlines and changing the scope of the critique of marketing practice beyond the economic and competitive advantages that CSR delivers