How much do fast fashion, pre-owned fashion feature in social media conversation?

A study of one million social media posts in some 20 languages across 80 countries has found that users mentioning products and their shopping are more numerous than those considering issues like social and environmental responsibility. And that pre-owned fashion is increasingly featured in the social media conversation.

The study, by marketing research specialist Onclusive, has found that when fast-fashion brands and retailers are mentioned in posts, it is chiefly as a reaction to films and videos (11.38%) or to the celebrity and influencers collaborating with these brands (6.8%). Other topics mentioned are size and fitting issues (5.8%), pre-owned fashion (4.75%), pricing (4.54%), deliveries (4.47%), product quality (4%) and design (3.58%).

Mentions of social and environmental responsibility ranked lower down the table, with figures that, though they may seem small, nevertheless signal that these issues has a substantial background presence, given the vast sample analysed by the study.

For example, 2% of the posts analysed mentioned toxic components, 1.9% related to sustainability in general, 1.6% to garment recycling, 1.3% to the legal framework for regulating fast-fashion brands, 1.1% to textile waste, and 0.5% to general ethical issues.

“Undoubtedly, these two conversation categories do not involve the same types of fashion consumers,” said Christophe Dickès, head of global media & copyright at Onclusive, talking to FashionNetwork.com. He underlined in his analysis that the topic of pre-owned fashion is featuring more and more.

Of the posts that mention product resale, 28,68% cited pre-owned fashion in general. Another 11.2% mentioned garment re-cycling, 9.2% discussed cost savings, and 8.3% repair and maintenance services.

Onclusive’s study also showed which sites are most frequently mentioned with regards to pre-owned fashion. Lithuanian site Vinted was way ahead, being mentioned in 24.9% of posts, followed by US site Poshmark (16.4%), Japanese site Mercari (16.1%), British site Depop (15.6%), another two US sites, Goodwill (11.8%) and Thredup (4.7%), French site Vestiaire Collective (3.9%), US site TheRealReal (2.5%), and Carousell from Singapore (2.4 %).

Below the 1% threshold were Asos Marketplace (0.61%), Buffalo Exchange (0.35%), Etsy Second-hand (0.3%), GoTrendier (0.22%) and Alibaba Second-hand (0.09%).