Wine War

Lucas Castells

Global Wine War 2009: New World Versus Old

The old world struggled to compete with the New World because they struggled in their marketing to the worldwide consumer. They thought the market was as in France, dominated of traditional consumers who really appreciated the high quality wines France, Spain and Italy could do. They had the experience doing it, the know-how and their brand name, that’s true, but they didn’t realized that New World potential consumer was not that specialized and was not going to appreciate that. The new consumer was not going to appreciate how the wine is carried to the shop or how has been stored during some years. Wine consumption in these countries was starting to emerge and they couldn’t differ about small differences in tastes. They just wanted to drink it because it was cool in different situations. There is a paragraph that says that young Americans liked to drink wine in some special situations like a romantic dinner but they really didn’t care about which one.

Here the problem was that Old Countries didn’t looked at socioeconomic, technological or political facts in the countries they wanted to export, they thought all the consumers were as the French or Italian ones and their product has to be sold because it was the best one in quality.

They should have investigated more by sending someone to that places and get some information about how the consumer was.

I am going to give an example I think clarifies all this a lot. United States doesn’t really care about soccer. Although is the most important sport in Europe and is seen almost as a religion, here is not even named when people speak about types of sport. So, do you think the US market is going to appreciate the difference between two types of soccer shoes, or the difference between how one team and another play? I am Spanish and I don’t understand American Football, I can’t really see which team is better!

What I am trying to say is that the key...