Jewelry Opinion Council Finds Consumers Don’t Mind Obscure Labs - July.2008

The World Gemological Institute, a grading lab which is part of the Israeli Diamond Institute group of companies, recently completed a consumer study about opinions of grading reports, conducted by the Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council (JCOC), the research division of MVI Marketing Ltd (MVI).

The research shows that there is a lot of confusion about grading labs and there is difficulty telling them apart. For instance, it revealed that although consumer awareness of the importance of grading reports was very strong there was somewhat strong awareness of the larger established labs such as AGS, GIA, and IGI.

However only 13% of respondents stated that they would not accept a diamond if it came from a lab they did not recognize. The other 87% of respondents stated that they would accept a report as legitimate even if they were not familiar with the lab.

While it seems that consumers are not aware that the diamond nomenclature is the same in certificates of all labs, the grading standards are far from uniform at the different labs. v