Circular market-places: exploring retail fashion futures, circular business models and customer participation

The circular economy has been embraced by the fashion industry as a solution to pollution, overproduction and textile waste, and circular business models proposed as a way for people to access goods within a circular fashion system. Despite the pervasiveness of fashion shopping in contemporary culture, little consideration has been given to how customer value is created in a circular system, or how retail practices and customer experience design can promote or impede a circular transition. This study examines how brands and retailers are implementing circular business models, communicating the circular value proposition, and involving customers in value co-creation. Initial findings suggest that, despite public commitments, many firms are not integrating circularity into their customer-facing processes. Customer participation is necessary to realising circular value propositions, and further research is needed into how design of retail sites can promote circularity in fashion.