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This paper aims to investigate the relationship between a sustainable university brand and the intention of international students to study at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), one of Malaysia’s premier universities. Moreover, the study explored the moderating effect of opinion leaders on the intention of international students to study at USM.

A survey involving 391 international students was conducted using a self-assessment questionnaire, data from which were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Empirical data show that USM’s sustainability brand had a positive impact on international students’ intention to study at the university, but opinion leaders had no significant sway in influencing this decision. This finding could be attributed to USM’s established reputation as a sustainable university, which helps cement its standing as the top choice for international students.

This research only focussed on international students at one Malaysian university. Hence, the findings are not generalisable, in particular, to illuminate the experiences of students at non-Malaysian institutions, whose contexts are inevitably different than Malaysia’s.

This study offered a dimensional insight into the university management on the pivotal branding of sustainability as one of the important tools for attracting international students to study at the university. In light of the findings, it is suggested that universities magnify their efforts to support the sustainable agenda, to help create a sustainable university brand that adds value to the interests of stakeholders.

Universities are continuously faced with challenges in terms of branding. Besides, not many universities are branded as sustainable universities despite the high involvement in sustainability-focused activities. Research has scarcely focused on the influence of the “sustainable university brand” on the marketing effort of the university to international students. In studies where this topic was highlighted, they focused on the opinion leader as the moderating influence of the choice of university amongst international students.

This paper aims to provide a quantitative basis to analytically determine the ranking of the brand personality of Adidas, Asics, Nike, Puma and Saucony brands among Iranian customers via a conventional multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method.

Data for determining the importance of evaluation criteria and ranking of brands are gathered by means of distributing questionnaires among a group of Iranian customers of sport shoes, as well as some industrial experts. The fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) was used to rank the brands with regard to dependencies between criteria and alternatives.

The results indicate that FANP is a capable method which provides invaluable insights for strategic marketing decisions in the sport product industry. Results show Adidas has the best performance in the sports shoe market compared to the other four brands. In this study, it was found that expertise sophistication was the most important criterion among Aaker’s five main criteria.

The value of this paper is applying FANP decision-making method for ranking sport shoe brands. This method has not been commonly used in the area of marketing, hence it is added to the pool of techniques used in ranking brands. In addition, evaluation and ranking of brands can be very useful for both academic research and practice. Researchers can benchmark the competences of each brand through evaluating them, and industrialists can extract the competitive advantages of the selected brands.

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the set of corporate social responsibility actions of a Brazilian bank as support to the strengthening of an organizational brand. The specific scope is to discuss the reflections of sustainable actions adopted for the recognition of the organization's brand.

A case study, based on Yin, and in‐depth interviews with those responsible for the sustainability department of the studied organization were adopted.

Literature and the understanding of the organization's executives, when compared to actions adopted by Banco do Brasil, allow the conclusion that the set of corporate social responsibility actions reflects, in its instrumental use, the intention of managing answers to social, economical and environmental demands, and in its conceptual use has helped in strengthening the financial institution's brand.

The paper focuses on the set of corporate social responsibility actions adopted by the largest financial institution in Brazil and its relationship with brand strengthening. It is one of the few studies examining the efforts of corporate social responsibility in a bank's brand.

The purpose of this study was to explore drivers of consumer engagement with sustainable fashion brands on Instagram to specifically answer the research question: what drives popularity of sustainable fashion among digital consumers?

Twenty-five global fashion retailers were identified and categorized as either (a) sustainable fashion brands (SFB), (b) sustainably aware mainstream brands (SAB) or (c) traditional fashion brands (TFB). Content analysis of the 25 retailer's Instagram posts over a three-week period was analyzed and categorized according to content theme. Data were analyzed for quantity of Likes and Comments (engagement) to identify engagement strategies with each of the brand groups.

It was found that different strategies may be taken regarding social media strategy for SFB, SAB or TFB. Consumers were engaged with unfamiliar content, for instance, sustainability to a consumer unfamiliar with the topic or how it applies to a specific brand. Digital consumers were looking for exciting and aesthetically pleasing posts. Specifically, all consumers were engaged with posts about Fashion and Lifestyle.

As the result of this study, sustainable fashion best practices and social media strategies were presented for the three brand categories of fashion retailers.

This study analyzed a cross-section of global fashion brands and identified “best practices” for digital consumer engagement with sustainable messages through Instagram. The findings provide original value, specifically in the area of fashion marketing via social media to communicate brand identify to digital consumers for brand growth.

The sustainability of global production chains is at the centre of discussion in the past few years. One of the most polluting sectors is the fashion industry. Fashion brands often decline responsibility, and continue misleading or exaggerated communication. This study aims to provide a comprehensive evaluation of regulation in the fashion industry and show practices of fashion firms.

Based on documentary analysis and literature review, the article describes current civil, supranational and governmental policies aiming to enhance the three dimensions of sustainability. Connecting these to the high-growth firm theory, the authors present a case study of a rising Hungarian fashion star based on press, sustainability and balance-sheet report analysis and personal interviews.

The article highlights some problematic areas of sustainability and greenwashing and describes the different levels and targeted areas of regulation. From the entrepreneurial perspective, the difficult balancing among growth and sustainability is analyzed and illustrated by the detailed case study. The authors provide regulatory suggestions (including the creation of a supranational monitoring agency).

Even if the authors doubt that global fashion chains can be sustainable, they offer both managerial and policy suggestions to reach the highest level of sustainability.

The suggested measures can contribute to the more sustainable practices and fraud reduction in the fashion industry.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the economic-regulatory approach used in this study to sustainable fashion industry is new, such as the presentation of the practices of a high-growth firm with a sustainable image.

Fashion brands are under heavy criticism for often exhibiting poor working conditions and producing environmental damage. Pressure comes from initiatives such as Fashion Transparency Index (FTI) by Fashion Revolution to assess fashion brands' transparency based on information publicly disclosed. But an understanding of how such movements reflect in a Global South country characterised by institutional voids is still absent.

While the FTI ranks individual brands, in this study the authors have analysed 305 documents extracted from the websites of 20 Brazilian fashion brands to unpack practices and re-bundle them according to three archetypes – opaque, translucent and transparent – that display a maturity curve.

The authors show that advancement is heterogeneous, and we complement previous research exposing the limits of an NGO in driving transparency by investigating a context embedded in institutional voids. The authors show that most fashion brands restrict transparency to tier-1 suppliers. Moreover, although fashion brands increasingly demand disclosure from their suppliers, they do not clarify their own purchasing practices such as cancellation and payment policies. On the positive note, the authors show that maturity for transparent brands can include the actionability concept by engaging with consumer via surveys and educative content.

The authors contribute to theory by offering a maturity curve of fashion supply chain transparency. The authors contribute to practice by offering the three archetypes – opaque, translucent and transparent. This study unveils heterogeneity and asymmetry between the levels of transparency that buying firms demand from their suppliers against what they provide about their own practices.

The purpose of this research is to identify the sustainable practices of luxury fashion brands through their communications via official reporting documents to classify practices used for communicating sustainability performance.

This research uses the qualitative content analysis of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-oriented sustainability reports to examine the sustainable practices of 31 companies within the top 100 global luxury brands.

The authors classify the sample into four clusters: sustainability driven, sustainability newcomers, sustainability potential and sustainability passive. Results indicate that companies in this sector are focused on the issue of sustainability even though there is a remarkable fragmentation in terms of practices.

The study contributes to a better understanding of sustainability reporting activities and approaches in the fashion luxury industry by describing best practices and the effect of sustainability in corporate communications.

Nation branding strategies are gaining priority as an area of research because of increasing market complexities and the rising importance of national competitiveness ranking. The sustainable development of a nation brand, when properly managed, will provide the economic incentive to attract investors, tourists and generate income for local communities. Therefore, this paper aims to focus on delineating the strategic imperatives for sustainable market competitiveness of nation brands.

The research adopts an eclectic approach in examining a wider range of factors such as sustainability and market competitiveness to develop a synergistic nation brand.

For nation brands to remain competitive, it is essential to understand the key determinants of market competitiveness. These determinants include sustainable tourism factors such as culture, heritage, environmental and integration of internal and external stakeholder groups from the public and private sectors.

This paper provides a framework for the analysis of sustainable market competitiveness factors of the nation brand. It also provides implications for nation branding and future research agenda.