Undergraduate Research

#Burnberry: A Case Study of Consumer Backlash Through Social Media

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Abstract

In the world of luxury fashion, over $600 million worth of merchandise deadstock (inventory that was not used or sold for its designated season) is incinerated each year. Over the past two decards, many luxury fashion brands have been exposed for using incineration as their means for dealing with the issue of unsold product deadstock. The most famous of these instances was in 2018 when Burberry was exposed for incinerating a multitude of unsold season-specific goods. The consumer backlash, as evidenced through social media using the #Burnberry, was so severe that Burberry ended up changing its policies and announced new sustainability initiatives in the same year. It is well known that comments on social media can have a huge impact on the promotion or discouragement of products, services, and consumer purchase intentions. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to analyze the #Burnberry conversation on Twitter following Burberry's clothing incineration scandal and identify common social media user engagement tactics to speculate how user influence impacted sustainability policy changes. The findings of this research study may be beneficial for future studies on consumer influence via social media related to sustainability messaging and brand engagement.

Keywords: social media, sustainability, incineration, deadstock, luxury fashion

How to Cite:

Hallberg, K. & Eike, R. J., (2022) “#Burnberry: A Case Study of Consumer Backlash Through Social Media”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 78(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.11798