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1. The Paradox of Sustainable Fashion: Perceived Value vs. Real Value
The sustainable fashion market faces a structural contradiction. Despite growing environmental awareness, the main barriers to purchase remain high prices, skepticism, stereotypes, and lack of knowledge. Academic research confirms that a consumer’s perceived value depends not only on price but also on the product’s social, emotional, and environmental values, factors that are especially relevant in sustainable fashion consumption.
The perception gap is evident: regenerated or recovered materials are often associated with aesthetic or qualitative compromises , a narrative that penalizes the entire sector. The managerial challenge, therefore, is not merely communicative but epistemological: how can we transform a negative perception into awareness of added value?
2. AR as a Strategic Response: Empirical Evidence
Augmented Reality (AR) emerges as a concrete solution to the problem of perceived value. Recent studies show that AR-assisted product–consumer interactions significantly increase purchase confidence and reduce return rates in complex product categories. More specifically, surveys indicate that around 75% of consumers expect to experience AR services when shopping online, and 71% say they would purchase more frequently if they had access to this technology (see The Impact of Augmented Reality Technology on Consumer Purchasing Decision Processes, 2022 – Frontiers in Business Economics).
AR is not just a visualization tool, it’s a mechanism for reducing uncertainty. The technology acts as a mediator between physical and digital retail experiences, lowering perceived risk and enhancing trust in purchase decisions. In the context of sustainable fashion, this means transforming skepticism toward regenerated materials into a tangible understanding of their aesthetic and functional value.
3. The Credibility Problem in the Age of Generative AI
However, the effectiveness of AR faces a critical obstacle: the erosion of trust in digital representations. Among respondents familiar with or using generative AI, 68% express concern that synthetic content could be used to deceive or defraud, and 59% report difficulty distinguishing between artificially created and real media.
Where photos, videos, and audio recordings once stood as standards of authenticity, new AI models capable of creating realistic media have shifted the paradigm of how people decide what to trust. This poses a challenge for technologies like AR: how can authenticity be ensured in a digital ecosystem where the boundary between real and artificial is dissolving?
Regenesi’s answer lies in radical transparency: AR doesn’t simulate, it visualizes. It doesn’t generate non-existent products but faithfully displays real objects within the user’s environment. It’s a fundamental distinction that must be communicated clearly to the market.
4. Dual Transition: Digital and Ecological as an Integrated Strategy
Regenesi addresses this challenge through the framework of the dual transition: digital and ecological not as parallel processes but as synergistic levers of innovation. AR becomes the tool that makes the complexity of sustainable materials accessible and understandable.
Digitalization does not replace sustainability; it makes it usable and intelligible. It allows each regenerated material’s story to be told and its quality to be shown without being undermined by the uncertainty of traditional online representation. This approach recognizes that the ecological transition requires new cognitive infrastructures to be understood and embraced by the market.
The integration of AR and sustainability creates a defendable competitive advantage because it simultaneously addresses two strategic needs: operational efficiency in e-commerce and differentiation based on authentic values. It is no longer enough to be sustainable, one must make sustainability visible, tangible, and verifiable.
5. Double Environmental Dividend: Efficiency and Behavioral Shift
Implementing AR generates a measurable double environmental benefit. The first is immediate: reduced return rates lead to lower transport emissions, less wasted packaging, and decreased reverse logistics. In a sector where returns represent a major environmental and economic issue, this impact is both quantifiable and substantial.
The second benefit is systemic and potentially more significant in the long term: by lowering perceptual barriers to sustainable products, AR facilitates a behavioral shift toward more responsible consumption. If the structural problem of the sustainable market is the perception of lower value, making that value tangible through technology accelerates the transition toward regenerative consumption models.
It’s not just about selling existing sustainable products more effectively, it’s about expanding the market itself by reducing uncertainty. Every conscious purchase potentially replaces a fast-fashion one, multiplying the positive impact beyond the single product.
6. Regenesi: From Theory to Practice
AR Experience represents the practical application of this strategic vision. By selecting the most iconic products from the Regenesi collection, the initiative doesn’t aim for total coverage but for demonstration of potential: regenerated materials become tangible, quality becomes verifiable, and sustainability becomes an experience.
Technological innovation in the service of sustainability is not a communication gimmick but a strategic necessity. In a market where perception defines value, controlling the instruments of perception means controlling competitive positioning.
The dual transition is not a choice, it is the only viable path for those who want to compete in the future of fashion.