Sustainable Luxury Management Minor

This course helps students to gain a better understanding on the dynamics of consumer experiences in the creative and luxury industries. It will also provide the conceptual frameworks and the toolkits needed to efficiently implement managerial processes within these industries. The focus is on the concepts of marketing related to the experience economy and students explore the fundamental strategies and business models of different companies and institutions in the creative and luxury sectors. Students are actively involved, analyzing global competitive trends and sharing best practices in a broad range of luxury brands and creative industries, such as museums, art foundations, theaters, fashion, food and beverage, jewelry, and hospitality.

This course aims to bring clarity to the paradoxical nature of the luxury industry, where excess and indulgence stand in sharp contrast to the concept of sustainability. Students will be introduced to the peculiarities that make the luxury sector distinct from conventional management environments. Thus, the course will teach students about the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the luxury industry. Students will learn about the peculiar social and environmental challenges faced by luxury corporations due to their focus on experiential and hedonic products and services. Furthermore, the course teaches students how luxury corporations can effectively handle diverging stakeholder demands and create a long-term sustainability strategy. The course outlook spotlights cutting edge topics related to emerging industry trends. Luxury corporations are under pressure to meet expectations from younger consumer generations who prioritize social and environmental practices throughout supply chains and have different ideas about what luxury means in the digital age. To address this, the course outlook offers insights into the role of new technologies.

The course focuses on how to build and manage a brand, based on the concept of Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE). The goal of the course is to expose students to the challenges that today brands face both from competitors' but also from consumers' points of view and to make students aware and to experience the potential tools companies can use to manage brands today.

This course will provide students with knowledge and tools on brand storytelling from a  business perspective. With an outlook on both the physical and the digital environment, students will learn how to enhance the economic value of a brand and the reputation of the company by engaging on brand storytelling practices. The course by building on the analysis of best (and worst) companies' practices, combines marketing storytelling and brand management theories with a specific focus on the data storytelling for business purposes.

This course focuses on providing students the knowledge and tools for digital entrepreneurship, applied both to digitally-native and digitally-transformed companies. It examines the main strategic business and communication laws that govern the digital environment. It also considers the most relevant impacts and forces expressed by digital transformation on organizations, business models, audience experiences, and brand storytelling.  The academic travel component will take place in Italy, visiting some digitally advanced companies and start-ups, incubators, and/or accelerators.

This course will be focused on providing students theoretical knowledge and practical tools for digital entrepreneurship with a specific focus on the fashion industry. 
Students will learn the main impacts of digital innovation on companies operating in the industry of fashion and by leveraging on the basic rules of digital entrepreneurship, they will explore different types of business models, of audience experiences and of digital storytelling. An introduction to the newest tools and approaches in the industry of fashion such as blockchain and eco-sustainability will be provided.

The course provides students with a state-of-the-art understanding of corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The practical relevance of CSR is highlighted through various examples that show how corporations have to deal with emerging ecological and social sustainability issues and stakeholder demands. Given the challenges' underlying complexity and uncertainty as well as multi-stakeholder involvement, corporations require awareness and strategic thinking to engage with their evolving responsibilities. Drawing on examples from various sectors, students will learn about different managerial approaches to address CSR issues and meet diverging stakeholder demands when designing and implementing long-term CSR strategies. 

This course introduces students to the field of operations and supply chain management. It aims to explain how to effectively organize the process of creating goods and services and introduce students to the major concepts, models, and methods in the field. The course explains how to apply quantitative and qualitative methods to solve a wide range of problems in managing operations, such as forecasting, sales planning, or outsourcing. The travel component of this course will include visits to Bologna and Umbria region in Italy. A specific focus will be given to understanding manufacturing companies in the automotive and food industries.

Green Economy'' and Sustainability'' are consolidated and solid managerial approaches that companies today need to embrace when managing their businesses. The course therefore illustrates the main sustainability models and contributions that green marketing can give to managers and outlines the main fundamental marketing decisions in order to enable students to define and implement a green marketing strategy.

This course introduces students to Fashion Studies beginning with the history of the making of fashion, thus laying the groundwork for the understanding of fashion as a creative and cultural phenomenon from the Renaissance to the present day. It then examines fashion as a dynamic communication process that is based on everyday social interactions in the contemporary world. In this section, special attention is paid to media representations, interactions with cultural industries, subcultural practices, and the impact of emerging technologies, exploring how the fashion process becomes an integral part of the identity formation. Finally, the fashion process is analyzed from the business perspective with a particular focus on marketing. Taking the classic concept of product life cycle, students learn how the fashion industry and consumer behavior propagate new trends in society.

The course will investigate the different types of sign languages that we find in the visual arts. It will study and discuss theories of semiotics and then investigate how each medium sets up its own method of visual communication through signs and symbols. What kinds of patterns of messages do we find in paintings? Do buildings have their own code of communication other than being functional containers? What kinds of messages does a film convey beyond its action? Do the clothes we wear make a statement? In addition to the theoretical aspect, the course will also contain an empirical and a studio component where students will conduct research on a particular topic, which they will then present in a visual medium of their choice.

This course has two primary goals: to introduce students to the history and theoretical writings of various strands of cultural studies, and to acquaint them with some of the intersecting axes - race, class and gender - that energize the field. Close attention will be paid to issues such as the shaping of identity, forms of representation, the production, consumption and distribution of cultural goods, and the construction of knowledge and power in a host of cultural practices and cultural institutions.