This study sought to examine new marketing ethics (ME) practices that can foster strong moral grounding in the fashion and apparel retail firms to delineate a new approach within this industry. We built on the distributive justice and stakeholder orientation literature to conduct a multi-case study with 15 self-proclaimed ethical fashion and apparel retailers to identify whether and how they differ from traditional and fast fashion retailers. Several data collection techniques were used to gather the evidence (i.e., direct observation, physical and online interviews) combined with a netnographic approach (i.e., online observation of websites and social media content). Our findings show that these firms are guided by ethical-centered values, which are reflected in their product components, purpose, communication practices, and sourcing practices, which point to the emergence of a new business approach. We contribute to the macromarketing literature by identifying a new perspective on the role of morality in ME based on distributive justice principles and stakeholder orientation. We also propose a more refined definition of ethical fashion and apparel retailers.

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Fashion and apparel retail firms have been scrutinized over the past few years regarding the regular occurrence of precarious labor conditions and slave labor in firms composing their supply chains. Even though this phenomenon presents many issues that comprise the theoretical scope of the institutional economics field of literature, scarce contributions have been found using this literature applied in this sector. From this starting point, this thesis combines theoretical and empirical efforts to develop a analytical framework grounded in institutional economics to observe the issues and propose solutions to ethical concerns regarding precarious labor conditions and contemporary slavery in fashion and apparel retail, in terms of institutional change. The overall methodological approach of the thesis is exploratory and qualitative, developed in four different but interconnected papers that comprise the development chapters of the thesis. The first two papers are theoretical, and combine contributions from four key literature backgrounds regarding our theme: business ethics, institutional economics, labor conditions and fashion and apparel retail. These were used to compose a theoretical proposition and a preliminary framework. The last two papers are empirical, both used to clarify the understanding over the proposed analytical framework. As a result, these empirical papers provide novel and contemporary evidence concerning the practices implemented by private and public agents in order to reduce and eradicate precarious labor conditions in this sector, and how they relate between each other, supporting and giving feedback, in terms of institutional change. The overall contribution of this thesis is to propose a novel approach, with analytical framework and propositions, to issues concerning labor conditions in fashion and apparel retail, as well as extending the scope of institutional change analysis to this contemporary phenomenon.