Qualitative Analysis of Sustainability and Innovation Within the Luxury Business Sector

Abstract

There is a constant discussion in the modern society regarding innovation. Everybody talks about the word, the concept, and the strategy behind it. Nonetheless, not too many companies and industries of the economy can proudly mention their use of innovation at operational level. The usage of the innovation concept is mostly linked to the idea of product improvements for commerciality and immediate returns. At the same time, sustainability occupies the second pole position behind innovation as a concept easily identifiable in numerous marketing campaigns, mostly for the beautification of phrases, rather than for business-related purposes. The question that stems here is related to our history as an innovative and sustainable civilization (to some extent), and from the difficulty of finding examples of both concepts in real-world business sectors. The present paper aims at constructing a systematic review of the previous research regarding the concepts of innovation and sustainability from a product management perspective, followed by an application to the case of the luxury apparel sector of the economy. The research could be continued through the usage of primary data, by extending the paper with state-of-the-art luxury business examples.