A contingency approach for SC strategy in the Italian luxury industry: do consolidated models fit?

The industry of luxury goods is worth investigating from the point of view of operations and supply chain (SC) strategy. Several authors expressed the need to focus SC strategy and align it towards the critical success factors (CSF) of the product/market. Despite this is a relevant topic also for the luxury industry, very few specific contributions dealing with luxury have been proposed in the SCM related literature. The present paper, based on 13 case studies of luxury manufacturers in Italy, moves its steps from the contingency theory and reports a review of the main models for SCM strategy, in order to assess their suitability to the luxury industry and to its contingent variables, in terms of CSF. Results show that most models do not apply to the luxury context; but some relevant variables can be extracted and used to identify and classify firms in this industry and to explain SC and operations strategies. It is confirmed that specific features of luxury SCs need to be taken into account.