Lying by telling the truth: The risks of deception by paltering and hypocrisy in corporate social responsibilities context<\/a>,\u201d was published in May in the Journal of Global Fashion Marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGoswami worked for several years in the leather and apparel industry in India and brought with her to academia an interest in real-world problems such as sustainability, climate change, social justice, and corporate ethics and social responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOver the years, the fashion industry has been notorious in terms of how it has made the world more unsustainable,\u201d she said. \u201cI think corporate social responsibility is probably more relevant to the fashion industry than any other industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While researching the paper, Goswami and Jaiswal found numerous incidents of fashion companies using paltering, or misleading marketing, including a case in which a company used a myriad of generic facts about natural materials to market a clothing line and to fabricate an illusion of corporate social responsibility, while craftily concealing its use of synthetic materials. Countless other companies inundated their marketing campaigns with an abundance of generic and vague information to tout their corporate social responsibility goals while conveniently omitting any mention of the companies\u2019 actual strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paltering is a somewhat new phenomenon in the marketing of corporate social responsibility strategies by fashion brands and has not been previously studied, Goswami said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through its active use of truthful statements to mislead, paltering is unique from past strategies of deceptive marketing practices, such as \u201cgreenwashing\u201d (environmentally focused deception), \u201cbluewashing\u201d (social responsibility deception), omission and lying. \u201cWe learned that paltering takes all of the strengths of these approaches and takes them a step further,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers shifted their initial focus on the incidence of paltering as a novel marketing approach after Goswami had a class discussion with her students and saw paltering\u2019s impact on them. The students cited examples of fashion brands that were being responsible with their corporate social responsibility goals\u2014they were the same companies Goswami and Jaiswal found to be using paltering. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018Wait a second. That\u2019s a disconnect.\u2019 This really got me looking at it from a new perspective,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is very challenging for consumers to identify paltering because at the end, it\u2019s a truthful statement, and because its overwhelming use of generic, irrelevant information makes it very confusing. So, it was challenging for us as scholars to make an intuitive prediction of how paltering would impact consumers\u2019 behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To study consumer response, the researchers conducted an experiment creating websites for two fictitious fashion brands, using paltered marketing to promote the companies\u2019 corporate social responsibility goals. They also set up subsequent fictitious news websites to disclose the misleading marketing to the consumers. Two groups of randomly recruited clothing consumers\u2014252 consumers in all\u2014each reviewed one pair of company and news websites and participated in a survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The results were stark. The deception caused the consumers to actively find ways to dissociate with the brands, Goswami said. They felt the brands were hypocritical in their marketing, causing a cascade of responses that negatively affected their relationship with the company, feelings about the company\u2019s reputation and their intent to buy from the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were right in expecting their reactions to be negative and expecting it to compromise consumers\u2019 interest in the brand,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we didn\u2019t expect it to be this noticeable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Goswami and Jaiswal would like their study to be a wake-up call for companies and consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBusinesses need to understand they need to take appropriate actions at every interaction point with consumers. The objective is not just about promoting their brand. They need to reimagine how to best present their accurate corporate social responsibility information,\u201d Goswami said. \u201cBut we want this research to also be a learning point for consumers because they have to be more involved. They need to review the information and critically assess the information that\u2019s being presented if they want to support sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 25, 2023 \u2013 Corporate social responsibility has become a growing issue for fashion brands after years when the industry has faced criticism for its lack of action to foster sustainability and curb clothing waste and harmful environmental impacts. But that pressure to reform has spawned another strategy: The little-known use of paltering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":87587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87586"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87590,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87586\/revisions\/87590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}