Internal website presentations of Czech luxury fashion businesses in the COVID-19 era

Abstract

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of tools boosting marketing, management, and innovations via digital platforms, such as internal websites of the top Czech luxury fashion businesses in the COVID-19 era. The main purpose of the research is to perform a case study about how these websites address COVID-19, innovations, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. Systematization of the scientific sources and approaches for solving the problem indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted industries that are dispensable and, at the same time, costly. The relevance of this scientific problem's decision matters theory and practice since the COVID-19 crisis is rather a negative challenge than a positive opportunity for businesses, which often ends up paying the ultimate price – falling into bankruptcy. A battery of employed methodological tools includes a simplified Delphi method with data processing by a panel of experts, the meta-analysis and content analysis, and teleological interpretations instruments. The research object is the Summer 2021 version of the internal websites of the top 20 Czech luxury fashion businesses based on their pre-COVID-19 turnover in 2018. The paper presents an empirical analysis based on this case study and juxtaposes it to prior academic findings. The research empirically confirmed and theoretically proved the underplayed potential of the websites of luxury fashion businesses. The research results could be helpful for theory adjustments and have practical implications and offer recommendations for businesses. They lead to propositions about the internal perspective and digital readiness to inform about it and a general attitude to the marketing, management, and innovations during crises.

Luxury, slow and fast fashion: A case study on the (un)sustainable creating of shared values

“…The second step is based on the exploration of the internal websites of these 30 businesses by a panel of experts identifying what CSV is proclaimed by each of these 30 businesses via its website. The relevancy of internal websites as sources of such information has been already established (MacGregor Pelikánová, 2021). The extraction and interpretation of such a data is to be completed via a qualitative content text analysis (Kuckartz, 2014).…”

“…In particular, there are numerous reported prior studies about the systematic and individual CSR (Pisani et al, 2017), the (in)significance of sustainability in the fashion industry, about the pros and cons of sustainability, CSR and CSV proclamations (Hála et al, 2022) and practices in the fashion industry (Gupta et al, 2019). However, there is a large gap about their categorial intra-relation by fashion businesses (MacGregor Pelikánová, 2021). Regarding the fashion industry and related studies, propositions about SDG oriented governments, CSR and CVS committed management and employees, investigating customers, responsible investors and other pro-sustainability devoted stakeholders are mushrooming with the same speed as propositions about the massive use of greenwashing and the manipulatively misleading use of references to sustainability, SDGs, CSR and CSV (MacGregor Pelikánová & Rubáček, 2022).…”

Negative Determinants of CSR Support by Generation Z in Central Europe: Gender-Sensitive Impacts of Infodemic in 'COVID-19' Era

“…In particular, active support by consumers and investors is indispensable, and its availability is feasible only if a proper message is conveyed effectively (MacGregor et al, 2020a;2020b) and efficiently (MacGregor Pelikánová, 2021). Without consistent and relevant communication, belief and trust could hardly be built and serve as the foundation for support (Kita et al, 2021).…”