Quality management in the Italian luxury industry: an empirical investigation on cashmere

Abstract

The luxury sector is characterised by several critical success factors, including 'premium quality'. Although quality management (QM) has been deeply studied in recent years, few authors explicitly addressed QM with regard to luxury industry as a whole, let alone the idiosyncrasies of Italian approach to luxury. The contribution of the present study is twofold: 1) first of all, it introduces a novel and rigorous research protocol to study the QM organisation, system and practices of companies in the luxury sector; 2) secondly, the protocol is applied to cashmere, worldwide synonymous with luxury, and a symbol of Italian excellence, to understand how Italian producers of cashmere garments are implementing QM. The research demonstrates that the cashmere luxury sector is characterised by an extremely high commitment towards quality both inside and along the supply chain, yet to some extent excellence is pursued through an informal approach to quality improvement. Managers in different fields could learn from the lessons learned in this sector and apply the best practices to their companies.