Buyer Behaviour in Fast Fashion
Drivers, Dilemmas, and the Shift Toward Conscious Consumption
Keywords:
Fast fashion, consumer behaviour, attitude–behaviour gap, sustainable consumption, impulse buying, social identity, green fashion, IndiaAbstract
Today, clothing is purchased more readily, discarded more rapidly, and produced on a scale that would have been inconceivable three decades ago. Nevertheless, consumers who drive this pattern often express genuine concern about the environmental costs. This coexistence of awareness and continued participation constitutes the contradiction that this paper aims to examine. Drawing upon scholarship from consumer behavior, social psychology, marketing, and sustainability science, the authors develop a conceptual literature review to explore the authentic motivations behind fast-fashion purchasing and, critically, why environmental concerns seldom translate into corresponding changes in purchasing behavior. The outcome is a four-domain framework that delineates psychological motivations, social influence mechanisms, structural market conditions, and sustainability tensions as mutually reinforcing forces. The analysis is grounded in the Indian market- a context that much of the existing literature has historically overlooked. The fundamental argument is clear: the disparity between knowledge and action is not, fundamentally, due to a lack of information. It is a structural condition. Addressing this gap will necessitate more than improved messaging regarding sustainability.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Priyanka Chadha Vermani, Himadri S Dey, Sachin Datt
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