Exploring Value Creation in the Gems and Jewellery Sector in Singapore

This paper is concerned with value creation, and focuses on the domestic fine gems and jewellery retail sector in Singapore. Based on interviews with Singaporean jewellers, it argues that exploration of this sector heightens our understanding of value in its various formal and informal forms. The value of gemstones, metals and jewellery are, on the one hand, standardised for example as the carat of gold. On the other hand, it is subject to much wider value creating dynamics associated with particular places and the cultural backgrounds of consumers, and used in the domestic and tourism market strategies of Singaporean jewellery retailers and corporations. The paper also shows how value creation in the Singaporean jewellery sector reaches far beyond the level of jewellery consumption and retail into firm-level pawning and investment sectors, and even into national financial sectors, making the topic particularly interesting in the geographical context of the financial center of Singapore.