Understanding cross-border diversity in consumer behaviour, advertising, sales and marketing management is a widely studied topic of international marketing.

Cultural difference matter particularly in business negotiations, advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing research. One of the most frequent approaches differentiates betweenhigh-context and low-context cultures, which impacts directly on the quality and quantity of information businesses are willing to share. In high-context cultures, most of the information is either in the physical context or initialized in a specific person. Very little is in the explicitly and verbally transmitted. High context cultures have a strong sense of tradition and history, and they assume the listener/reader already knows everything. In low-context cultures, rules are important, knowledge is publicly accessible, the message is carried more by verbal than non-verbal means.

It can be said that Each market has its own priorities with regards to the ethical fashion agenda. Across Western Europe, each individual geographical (ethical) fashion market comes with its own flavour and historical development that influences the way the sustainability discussion is perceived in society at large. While the Scandinavian markets have adopted a more integrated, pro-active and notably factual approach, other European markets specialise in one aspect or another of the full spectrum, the most popular ones being either fair trade or the environment