Transformation of Business Models in the Global Textile, Apparel, and Fashion Industry, Facing the Sustainability and Global Value Chains Reconfiguration Pressures

The buyer-driven globally integrated Business Model (BM) built around the Global Value Chains (GVCs), which ensure low-cost manufacturing, large production volumes, and a high level of standardization, is the dominant BM in the global Textile, Apparel, and Fashion (TAF) industry. COVID-19 has challenged globally extended GVCs. The transformation of the GVCs of the TAF industry is also enforced by climate change issues and a range of social challenges that create strong pressure for greater sustainability. This research aims to explore and understand (through reflections of trends in public communication of businesses, consumers, and other stakeholders) ongoing transformations in the global TAF industry. Twitter users’ communication data were collected for 54 consecutive days, from 21 March to 13 May 2023. More than 115 thousand unique tweets and replies were collected. Keyword-based coding and code cooccurrences analysis revealed that low-level response to GVC regionalization challenges is associated with the retention of established GVCs, the slight adaptation of value proposition and minor value-adding services, which do not change the overall structure of the GVC. The high-level response to both the challenges and the respective pressures is realized by companies working outside the currently established GVCs. The theoretical implications based on the empirical data suggest that BMs, built on the basis of GVCs, tend to preserve their current state as long as possible; the internal transformation potential is low, the innovations and high-level responses to strategic and tactical challenges are mostly realized outside the established GVCs.