Understanding Sustainability Efforts along the Luxury Value Chain

A number of recent trends such as consumer attention on the social and environmental impacts of brands, changing of social norms, and investor expectations, have led to an increased focus on luxury sustainability. Current studies mainly focus on consumer perspective or case studies. However, a systematic comparison of sustainability effort along the value chain of luxury firms is still under-investigated by both scientific and management perspective. The main research objective of the present work is aimed at filling this gap. From a methodological point of view, all the 40’s published sustainability reports derived from the top 100 luxury brands by turnover, released on 2018 by Deloitte were evaluated, according to a triple research approach: (i) following the literature review, set a suitable taxonomy of variables, in order to assess the impact of sustainability actions; (ii) design a pattern of firm clusters through the above variables, thus allowing a better comprehension of their sustainable initiatives; (iii) proceed to the content and mixed method analysis of sustainability reports, with the aim of discovering the pattern of recurring topics. The emerging findings provide a framework of the state of the art of sustainability actions in luxury industry, and allow to deepen the knowledge and understanding of luxury firm’s commitment to sustainability as a part of their market value proposal.