New vs Old Wine World Perspective

WINE BUSINESS PRACTICES: A NEW VS OLD WINE WORLD PERSPECTIVE (REFEREED)

Hervé Remaud, University of South Australia, Australia André Beaujanot Q. University of South Australia, Australia Jean-Pierre Couderc, Agro Montpellier, France herve.remaud@unisa.edu.au Abstract This research investigates and compares some of the strategic choices made by small wine firms from two different new wine producing countries - Australia and New Zealand and from one traditional wine producing region of France. This research was firstly conducted in 2003 in France with 103 wine firms interviews and then in Australia and New Zealand, with a total of 78 wine firms interviewed in 2004. The results obtained in the study lead to characterize business practices of these wine firms, and to discuss the links between their strategic choices and their general performance. Some of our preliminary descriptive results show that firms from these two distinct continents behave differently in their strategic choices. First, Australian together with New Zealander wine firms are more export oriented than the French: 36% versus 10% of their total turnover comes from exports respectively. Secondly, Australian and New Zealander wine firms are more “entrepreneurial” than the French ones: their propensity to innovate and launch new products is much higher. In order to explain these different business practices, an effort to match wine sector perspective and strategic management profiles is presented through a factor analysis and then a hierarchical cluster analysis. Some complementary explanations can be suggested: business practices are also clearly dependent upon the business activity (bottled wine versus bulk wine), and the main goal of the owner-manager (improving business economic performance versus increasing market share). If one cluster is exclusively composed by French wine firms, the two others are a mix of new and old wine world firms.

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Introduction On the eve of the XXIst century, the...