Luxury Supply Chain Management in Automotive Industry: The Case Study of Automobili Lamborghini

This thesis explores how luxury supply chain management enables extreme customization in the automotive industry through the case of Automobili Lamborghini’s Ad Personam program. Building on research in luxury operations, supplier governance, and international management, it develops six propositions addressing: (P1) value creation under customization; (P2) governance under asset specificity and aesthetic ambiguity; (P3) selective internalization of brand‑signature stages; (P4) postponement as an agility lever in micro‑lot customization; (P5) the advantage of dual embeddedness across local clusters and global excellence hubs; and (P6) purchasing maturity as an orchestration mechanism. The study adopts a qualitative single‑case design. Primary evidence comes from a semi‑structured interview with key informants involved in Ad Personam project management and procurement expert, complemented by end‑to‑end process reconstruction and proposition‑driven thematic analysis. Findings indicate that Ad Personam creates customer value mainly through identity‑based uniqueness and aesthetic innovation, allowing premium pricing and margin capture when promise credibility is protected through rigorous feasibility assessment, staged approvals, and configuration freeze points. Under high aesthetic ambiguity and specialized capabilities, effective execution relies on hybrid governance combining formal specification and validation routines (e.g., change requests/special files, sampling and photo checks, quality gates) with relational safeguards and intensive cross‑functional interaction with suppliers. Make‑or‑buy choices appear selective: internalization is favored for high‑signature, high‑margin activities (notably in interiors), while many customization contents remain constrained by the architecture and supplier nominations of series production. Contrary to classic postponement logic, Lamborghini’s micro‑lot agility is achieved less through late‑stage differentiation and more through front‑loading validation and synchronizing commessa‑specific logistics with an integrated assembly flow. Evidence on embeddedness suggests strong benefits from proximity for rapid problem solving and iterative aesthetic alignment, while global suppliers remain critical where compliance and safety requirements dominate. Overall, the thesis refines established assumptions about postponement in luxury automotive customization and highlights purchasing‑enabled orchestration and supplier governance as central mechanisms for delivering customized exclusivity with industrial reliability.