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The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of ethical fashion consumption. Even though consumers demand more ethical responsibility from companies, it is debatable if consumers would sacrifice their own personal needs to support ethically produced clothing.

Focus groups are conducted in the UK and Germany in order to elicit consumers' beliefs and attitudes towards ethical issues in the fashion industry and its effect on purchase behaviour. Questionnaires are administrated to verify the outcome of the focus groups.

The findings from this research demonstrate little evidence that ethical issues have any effect on consumers' fashion purchase behaviour. When it comes to fashion purchase, personal needs motivate consumers primarily to buy garments and take precedence over ethical issues.

Only a specific age group between 18 and 26‐years‐old is interviewed. Both research methods are undertaken in the area of Manchester, England, and the area of Frankfurt, Germany, which perhaps limits the meaning of the results.

Consumers feel that they are often unable to make an ethical choice. Therefore they do seem to need more information to allow them to make better ethical judgements and there is a role for ethical fashion companies to communicate this more effectively.

This research paper gives insight into ethical fashion purchasing behaviour among UK and German consumers and provides information to improve the potential of ethical fashion.

This study aims to explore young German consumer perspectives of rental fashion platforms by studying their perceived benefits, potential barriers as well as preferred clothing categories to rent from. This “new” kind of shopping has not yet found great success among young German adults, although there is a substantial margin of growth for this generation.

This qualitative study was conducted through 24 in-depth semi-structured interviews with young female and male German consumers out of Gen Y and Z. The analysis of the data was supported by the software NVivo.

Results indicate that young German consumers value renting clothes for occasions, to frequently change up their wardrobe, out of sustainability aspects and because of efficiency and convenience reasons. However, an entry barrier to the use of rental platforms still persists through a lack of awareness and information, as well as price and high demand issues.

As the interview’s focus group was set to young German consumers, a generalization of the findings to consumers from other countries or out of other generations might be limited.

Managers first need to lower the currently existing entry barrier that prevents many consumers from renting fashion online by raising their awareness and providing them with sufficient information about the platform’s processes as well as their terms and conditions.

This research intends to better understand young German consumers’ attitude toward rental fashion platforms and why renting fashion has not yet achieved more success among them.The results first give managers helpful insights for implementing successful marketing strategies by focusing on spreading awareness among young German adults to stem current entry barriers. Second, these results serve as a basis for future quantitative research that deepens the understanding of the correlation of current findings with other variables (e.g. age, the importance of material possessions in consumers’ lives).