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Fashion, which has always played an important role in the economy and culture of many countries, is a sector with a high environmental impact, responsible for significant water consumption and the production of a large amount of waste. In particular, fast fashion, a business model based on offering consumers new, cheap and trendy products, seems to be one of the main drivers of the constant quest for innovation in fashion products, with a consequent increase in the environmental and social impacts of this policy. Among the companies in the sector, the SHEIN platform, founded in China in 2008 under the name Zzko, has become a real competitor to global industry giants such as Inditex and H&M, leading to a business model that can be defined as ultra-fast fashion. The article presents the results of a qualitative research project aimed at understanding the consumption model, purchasing motivations and possible concerns about sustainability of young female Italian consumers who use the platform. To this end, 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of university students, who are SHEIN customers, to identify their main purchasing motivations, their consumption habits, and the importance they attribute to sustainability issues. The results show that the main drivers for the platform success are the low price of the clothes and the wide variety of styles available. Students also proved to be quite sensitive to the issue of the company's unsustainable production practices, although this awareness does not automatically translate into a decision to stop buying the brand's products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The term prosumer, first introduced by Toffler in the 1980s, has been developed by sociologists in response to Web 2.0 (the set of technologies that has transformed a predominantly static web into the collaborative medium initially envisaged by Tim Berners-Lee). The phenomena is now understood as a process involving the creation of meanings on the part of the consumer, who re-appropriates spaces that were dominated by institutionalized production, and this extends to the exploitation of consumer creativity on the production side. Recent consumption literature can be re-interpreted through the prosumer lens in order to understand whether prosumers are more creative or alienated in their activities. The peculiar typology of prosumption introduced by Web 2.0 leads us to analyze social capital as a key element in value creation, and to investigate its different online and offline forms. Our analysis then discusses the digital divide and critical consumerism as forms of empowerment impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociologia del Lavoro is the property of FrancoAngeli srl and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to analyses how the changes of the fundamental dimensions, existence, space and time effect consumer behavior, as a consequence of the digitalization of life. The role of the consumer has dramatically changed within the process of consumption, by dramatically changing the role of the consumer. Changing it from target to actor, an actor with the capacity to react consciously to the stimuli offered by the system of production. Hence the opportunity arises, to reconsider the role of the consumer from its rational capability. Defining an anthropological evolution of the subject, a subject who is more consciously involved within the production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]