Poverty wages, pressure, overuse of natural resources and mountains of garbage: the problems of mass fashion consumption are well known, and the nation's wardrobes are full. But why does fast fashion continue to flourish? One cause is advertising, which persuades consumers of needs and wishes, tempts us to make impulsive purchases, and awakens “hunting instincts” with supposed bargains.  

With digitalization, the focus of marketing departments is primarily on online retail, because today around every third piece of clothing is bought online.  

The Impact of "dark patterns" 

Many online platforms design their interfaces to influence users’ actions by experimenting with various parameters such as site architecture, colours or phrasing. These types of interfaces, which aim to disorientate the user so that he or she performs or avoids a specific action, are called dark patterns. The aim is commercial: with dark patterns, online retailers influence user behaviour and entice consumers to make more and faster purchases and to disclose personal data.  

The forms of these "dark patterns" are manifold: pop-up windows featuring discount codes with a very short term, extra advantages stating at a certain purchase value, and the unsolicited addition of articles or services in the shopping basket are just as much a part of the retailers’ bag of tricks as customer accounts that are difficult or impossible to cancel online and the unsolicited use of “cookies”, where ads for online shops follows us to other websites. Dark patterns are manipulative, but their use is often legal and exploits the lack of legislation and consumer protection in online shopping. 

They influence our behaviour to encourage us to buy much more than we need. 

Dark patterns are the lubricant in the engine of the online fast-fashion industry.

Summary of Results:

By far the most dark patterns, 18, were identified at the Chinese ultra-fast fashion shop Shein: the website dazzles visitors with so many ads and animated pop-up windows that users looking for something specific will find it hard to get past the various click traps.  

The Chinese platform Aliexpress, the US company Amazon and the French Shop La Redoute follow some distance behind, but still with an above average number of different dark patterns. We found fewer dark patterns in the online shops of companies that still sell predominantly through brick-and-mortar stores, such as Zara, Globus and Manor. H&M uses slightly more tricks and ploys, with six dark patterns, taking the unenviable top spot in this group.  

• Particularly common are dark patterns which tempt consumers to buy more items, such as the display of supposedly exactly matching items as soon as something lands in the shopping cart (13 shops), or by calculating shipping costs if too little is bought (10 shops).

• In order to bind consumers more strongly to them, 12 shops require or encourage customers to set up an account for an order, and 9 urge the consumer to subscribe to advertising newsletters.  

• We were also shocked by how difficult it is to delete such accounts and the associated personal data. While the setting up of an account is done in two or three simple steps, at 10 shops a cancellation is difficult or even impossible via the mobile website.  

Also widespread is a classic among dark patterns: 9 websites make it difficult for users to refuse or adapt advertising "cookies". Five of the shops even exploit gaps in Switzerland’s comparatively lax data protection law and store cookies on visitors’ smartphones or computers without being asked. 

The power of deceptive design 

The problem? It works. Consumers are 2 to 4 times more likely to perform a specific action in an environment containing dark patterns. 

To influence our choices, platforms modify the decision space or manipulate visible information. They can pull the user in a certain direction, for example by pre-selecting certain options such as the “choice” to accept a range of cookies or by forcing the user to create an account for a purchase or to access content.  

Especially popular on E-commerce websites are elements “nudging” users in a certain direction with discounts or other special promotions. An additional tactic is to play on “Fomo”, the fear of missing out on something: as on the qoqa.ch site, which offers a decreasing percentage of items remaining, or on booking.com, which sends its customers alarmist messages about the few offers still available at a given price.  

Dark patterns can also take the form of false directions through counter-intuitive colour coding or double negations. A common form is to influence by obstruction, as when signing up to a website or service is possible with one click but unsubscribing takes much more effort. The Norwegian Consumer Council has filed a complaint against Amazon accusing it of making the unsubscribe process particularly complicated. 

It’s important to remember that dark patterns are not used by the shops according to feeling or discretion, but on the basis of studies and tests. Each of our online movements leaves a data trail, and this forms the gold of marketing analysts, where the effect of the smallest design or structural adjustment on a website can be evaluated immediately. Whatever increases sales, keeps consumers on a given page for longer, or provides more exploitable personalised data is implemented by marketing teams. 

Slowing down fast fashion and protecting consumers 

If you buy fashion online, you can't avoid dark patterns. Every shop examined uses at least some instruments from the bag of tricks of online marketing, and many play the whole keyboard: if it works and if it’s legal, or at least tolerated, it will be used.  

Raising awareness of consumers about dark patterns and their impact can help us learn to avoid some traps, to be more careful with our data and to consume in a more self-directed way. But it would be wrong to consider dark patterns and the over-consumption they increase as purely an individual problem. Consumption beyond planetary boundaries is a systemic problem that we should also address with systemic solutions, through political regulation. 

“Promoting more sustainable consumption patterns” is one of the guidelines set by the Federal Council in its Strategy for Sustainable Development. In its detail, the strategy has provoked a lot of criticism, as the Federal Council unilaterally focuses on individual behaviour change and refuses to take regulatory measures. In doing so, it ignores how much a lack of regulation undermines individualist approaches. Dark patterns undermine all efforts to promote a more sustainable way of consumption. They use the findings of consumer psychology to do exactly the opposite.  

Politicians should decisively oppose this sabotage: to protect consumers, to promote a more sustainable way of consumption, and in order not to give competitive advantages to precisely those retailers who use manipulative instruments in a particularly unscrupulous way.