Quality management in Italian luxury industry : an empirical investigation on jewelry

In recent decades the worldwide attention and interest in luxury life significantly increased, following by observing exceptional increase experienced in luxury industry. Overtime luxury has meant different things, luxury is a conceptual and symbolic dimension and these days it is the result of a historical evaluation. Nowadays the luxury world is familiar for all the people. While it is noticeable that many studies have been performed through luxury industry but current research is mainly focuses on sociological, branding and marketing aspect. As a starting point with the purpose of profoundly analyzing of luxury sector, critical success factors of industry have been investigated. Among those, the premium quality was found to be the most significant element to be taken into account in current study. In fact, even though quality and quality management have been carefully studied in recent years, few researches have been focused on luxury industry or indeed Italian luxury industry. In present research Italia has been chosen according to its reputation in luxury industry especially in jewelries. Additionally in all over the world, Italian jewelry is synonym with luxury and perfection. Current research involves three different data collection analysis that its superior goal is, describing quality management organization, systems and practices of Italian jewelry industry manufacturers, and then exploring the major possible impact of contingent factors on quality terms. After that, user based perspective has been considered in order to find out the customers' perception of quality. Subsequently, market perspective has been analyzed. In particular, a deep literature review about the study of jewelry, luxury and Italian luxury jewelry industry has been implemented. Next, the most significant quality organization and management variables together with relevant contingent factors were identified and formed the present research framework. Then six case studies were conducted. At the end, all the possible information and data gathered from sample cases were summarized in a cross-case table to be examined. In addition twenty samples customers have been considered with the purpose of studying the quality perception from a customer side of view. With this purpose and in order to forming the research framework, most relevant contingent factors considered and the relationship between independent variables (design and brand origin) with dependent variable (customer perception of quality) has been investigated. In the end all the customers data summarized and then analyzed.