Sustainable luxury: current status and perspectives for future research

Abstract

Over the past decades, the luxury sector has been constantly growing; consequently, luxury products have attracted the interest of many scholars. Nevertheless, only recently research has been started to investigate possible relations between luxury and activities in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. This development was overdue: as luxury products often act as industry models, a shift towards sustainable luxury can pave the way for more sustainable mass products on a broad scope as well. Thus, a profound understanding of the mechanisms behind the successful combination of luxury and sustainability can provide insights for both enhancing individual firm success and achieving a shift towards more sustainable products, which is desirable from a societal perspective. To foster this research stream, the present paper provides a systematic literature review on luxury and sustainability in a broader sense, which, based on an inductive approach, identifies the various areas covered by existing research. This allows critical reflection of what is still missing in the ongoing discussions and shows where priorities within research have been set. We identify several major blind spots within extant research and discuss possible further research paths to close them.

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“…To identify the most relevant literature, we conducted a systematic literature review (Kunz et al 2020;Tranfield et al 2003). Such an analysis is considered the most appropriate method to survey existing research and to identify research gaps (Fink 2019).…”