Sustainable Fashion and Distributed Decision-Making: A QR-Based Participatory Feedback Model for Mid-Size Brands

This thesis examines how digital transparency, and QR-enabled garment labels specifically, reshapes the relationship between fashion brands and consumers, focusing on mid-size firms in a semi-globalized market. Drawing on service-dominant logic, co-creation theory, and cognitive models of information processing, the study conceptualises dialogical labels as tools extending beyond information disclosure toward participatory brand-consumer relationships. An online between-subjects experiment (N = 217) exposed participants to one of three garment label conditions for a fictional denim brand: a standard label, an information-dense technical label, and a dialogical QR-enabled label offering traceability data and a feedback channel. Results show the QR-enabled label significantly increased perceived ethicality and consumer empowerment, while brand trust, risk reduction, and willingness to pay showed no significant differences. A transparency paradox emerged: the minimal label was perceived as more transparent, consistent with cognitive ease theory. Findings suggest dialogical transparency operates primarily as a relational rather than informational mechanism: consumers value the possibility of participation more than participation itself.