Responsible communication in sustainable fashion: a mixed-methods neuromarketing study of young consumers

Sustainable fashion claims are communicated through labels, visual cues, traceability signals, and brand narratives that shape how consumers interpret responsibility, credibility, and product value. Their effectiveness is nevertheless constrained when sustainability information competes with aesthetic and functional product cues or when claims are perceived as vague or weakly substantiated. This study examines how young consumers process sustainable fashion claims and how visual attention, emotional response, and perceived credibility contribute to that process. Using a mixed-methods neuromarketing design, the study combines a pretest (N = 22), face-coding (N = 30), eye-tracking (N = 31), and focus groups (N = 20) with consumers aged 18–25 in Bogotá, Colombia. Each component was analysed at the method-specific level and the findings were subsequently integrated through triangulation. Results show that product and perceptual cues capture initial attention, whereas sustainability information receives greater engagement when it is visually integrated and connected to functional product value. Facial-expression analysis indicates that sadness was the most prominent average emotional category across the stimuli examined. Qualitative evidence further suggests that, within this study, socially framed sustainability messages were perceived as more concrete and emotionally accessible than more abstract environmental claims. Across methods, claim credibility and perceived congruence with the product emerged as important conditions in the interpretation of sustainability communication. By integrating attentional, affective, and interpretive evidence, the study advances understanding of how sustainability claims are processed without assuming direct effects on purchase behaviour. The findings have practical implications for the design of labels, traceability communication, and brand claims that seek to make sustainability information more visible, understandable, and credible.