Market Turbulence and Electronic Approaches to Marketing in Wine Sector SMEs: A Structured Abstract

Abstract

The global wine industry has undergone considerable change in the last decade. Worldwide competition in the sale of wine has intensified — producers are dealing with an oversupply of wine (Pretorius, 2007), and the old world producers of Europe are under assault by the new world producers of Australia, California, and Chile (Echikson, 2004; Mora, 2006). While the proportion of wine production under the control of large multinational companies has increased significantly, a majority of wineries remain small or medium in size (Dorozynski, 2010; Story et al., 2005). Since most wine SMEs exist in locations remote from their consumer base, both distribution of wine to, and communication with wine consumers is challenging. Wine tourism has become a significant driver of economies dominated by the wine sector. One of the best possible alternative strategies to ensure growth is to focus on direct marketing, using for example traditional direct channels such as wine clubs and cellar door sales, but also newer digital technologies and online channels.