Carol Wei is a PhD Candidate in Marketing in the Faculty of Business & Economics at The University of Melbourne, where she also received her Master of Management and Master of Commerce (Marketing).
Her research is focused on understanding market legitimacy and the role of consumer in challenging the marketing practices and market dynamics. Her dissertation is centered around fashion and sustainability in consumer research by investigating the meaning of slow fashion for consumers and how consumers use slow fashion in their everyday lives. She uses a wide range of qualitative research methods and datasets, including ethnography (interviews and ethnographic fieldwork )and netnography (web-scraped social media data and secondary data).
As a PhD Candidate, Carol has been awarded the Best Doctoral Student Paper Award (2021) from the Department of Management and Marketing. She has recently presented her research "Struggling for Legitimacy in an Illicit Market" at the Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) in 2021. Carol currently teaches Principles of Marketing at the undergraduate level at The University of Melbourne.
Thesis Title
The Meanings and Practices of Slow Fashion
Thesis Summary
The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries. Media and activists alike criticise the fashion industry for wasting resources, exploiting labour, and generating garments that overflow landfills. I aim to understand the phenomenon of slow fashion, which emerged against these criticisms of the current fashion systems. Slow fashion are those practices aimed at making fashion longer lasting, more ethical, and more sustainable. Specifically, I focus on slow fashion consumers and practices in Australia. I draw insights from four relevant theoretical perspectives in consumer research to set the stage for my investigation of the meaning of slow fashion for consumers and how consumers use slow fashion in their everyday lives. The expected contributions are threefold. I propose to understand the meaning of slow fashion for consumers, explore consumer practices around slow fashion, and explain how slow fashion influences consumers daily lives and identity projects. In doing so, I propose to contribute to theory building about slow fashion by demystifying slow fashion consumers and their practices and conceptualizing slow fashion in consumer research.