Luxury, Sustainability, and Corporate Social Responsibility: Insights from Fashion Luxury Case Studies and Consumers’ Perceptions

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, rapid technological and scientific developments have produced continuous and significant improvements in people’s daily lives. However, this growth has had considerable, and sometimes horrifying, consequences for the climate and environment (Egri and Ralston 2008). As a result, sustainability has become a central point in public discourse—not only for consumers, but also for the companies, and in particular those in the luxury industry, who generally operate at the international level and may serve as relevant actors in economic development (Fraj and Martinez 2007; Kerr et al. 2009). Our focus on luxury firms was born from the fact that such firms are still uncertain about how to combine luxury and sustainability; indeed, these two concepts are often seen as contradictory (Joy et al. 2012; Kapferer and Michaut-Denizeau 2014). The very term “Luxus” has a double meaning: It positively connotes such concepts as beauty, prestige, and power, but also implies excessive and ostentatious displays of wealth (Kapferer 1997, 2012). This duality helps to explain consumers’ difficulty in reconciling luxury, sustainability, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and also why a company like Prada recently launched a website dedicated to highlighting initiatives that reflect the brand’s commitment to sustainability. The present chapter thus delves into a currently neglected area of research—namely, consumers’ perceptions of the relationship between luxury, sustainability, and the CSR strategies that major luxury companies adopt to counter said perceptions. To analyze luxury brands’ initiatives, we conducted a qualitative study on three well-known brands—Gucci, Tod’s, and Bulgari—and examined their eco-sustainable collections and approaches. We supplemented this research with a survey of consumers’ perceptions regarding luxury, sustainability, and CSR specifically by interviewing 200 consumers via an online questionnaire. From these data sources, we draw theoretical and managerial implications.

Appendix

Part I. Luxury purchases

• 1. How often do you buy luxury goods/services? (multiple choice question)

  • Frequently

  • Occasionally

  • Rarely

  • I never buy luxury products

• 2. If you’ve never bought, why? (multiple choice question)

  • I don’t like the offers of luxury companies

  • I feel uncomfortable when I go in luxury stores

  • I believe that luxury goods offer nothing more than the common brand

  • Luxury goods don’t match with my personality

  • Economic impossibility

  • Other

Part II. Sustainable development, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the luxury industry

• 3. Have you ever heard about sustainable development and CSR?

  • Yes

  • No

• 4. If you heard about them, can you define these concepts with your own words? (open-ended question)

• 5. In your opinion, what dimensions of sustainability are most important? (You can select more than one dimension)

  • Social: improving lifestyle quality

  • Enviromental: satisfying consumer needs without depleting natural resources

  • Economic: creating economic value for present and future generations

• 6. Do you know any luxury company that has implemented sustainable production processes and/or CSR strategies?

  • Yes

  • No

• 7. How do you judge luxury companies’ production chain* activities? (1 = Negatively; 7 = Positively)

  *: all the stages of making a product, considered together.

• 8. If you judged it negatively, why? (open-ended question)

• 9. Do you think that companies that implement sustainable choices and commit to CSR do so for individualistic reasons?

  • Yes

  • No

• 10. Do you think that luxury companies should recover ethical and moral values?

  • Yes

  • No

• 11. Do you think that CSR is an added value for companies?

  • Yes

  • No

• 12. Would you be willing to pay more for a green luxury product/service?

  • Yes

  • No

• 13. Would you buy a luxury brand’s “green” collection?

  • Yes

  • No

Part III. Three leading luxury companies: Gucci, Tod’s, and Bulgari

• 14. Do you know the luxury brands Gucci, Tod’s, or Bulgari?

  Mark the answer “other”, if one of them is unknown to you.

  • Yes

  • No

  • Other

• 15. Do you think that the three brands are committed to the topics of sustainable development and CSR?

  • Yes

  • No

• 16. Would you buy some of their “green” articles?

  • Yes

  • No

Part IV. Socio - demographic data

• 17. Gender

  • Male

  • Female

• 18. Age

  18–25; 26–35; 36–50; 51–65; Over 65.

• 19. Occupation (open-ended question)