Introduction

I.1. Wine management and marketing: a field of analysis and major questions

This second volume of Wine Management and Marketing, following the first volume published in 2021, proposes to present new studies on issues in the sector, on the competitiveness of companies, and on organizations in a competitive but highly regulated market context. Therefore, it approaches the wine industry in different dimensions, with plural approaches, authors specializing in different disciplines of the social sciences, economics and management, and different angles and objects of study, in order to try to shed light on its complexity. Thus, the subjects of the various chapters proposed concern organizations or companies, often specialized in the production or trade of wine; they may also concern the sector or industry as a whole. In all cases, the authors, who are researchers strongly committed to this sector, were then able to consider many industrial specificities that give the industry a special place within the agricultural and agri-food industries. The bias here is once again to multiply approaches beyond the frontiers of marketing sensu stricto, sometimes management sciences or economics, since they shed light on wine markets and the impact of certain actions on the general economy and the competitiveness of the sector.

Here, we will not discuss the specificities of the wine sector in detail, which is extensively presented and analyzed in the first volume in 2021. But it is clear that particular characteristics mentioned then, such as the regulation mode historically established in Europe and based on a single definition, the hypersegmentation of marketed products, and the late but intense globalization of markets over the last two decades naturally contribute to inducing marketing and management issues specific to the sector. We could add that the French marketing sector, in particular, has a belated relationship with this discipline, which was imported from the United States in the second half of the 20th century. In any case, it seems useful to us to continue to address, from an always interdisciplinary perspective and within the social sciences, some of the major questions that drive the sector and that constitute the authors’ research subjects.

As with the first volume, it is again a question of offering the work of researchers in an accessible and easily understandable version to nonspecialist readers, interested in the French wine sector. Thus, the authors, who are mostly teachers as well as researchers, have tried to use structured modes of presentation, as well as a pedagogical style and approach, but it is by no means a question here of courses or didactic presentations, let alone recipes supposed to guarantee success in company management. While the coordinators and the majority of the authors are still members of the Montpellier research cluster, structured around the Institut Agro Montpellier1, INRAE and the University of Montpellier, some colleagues from other institutions, such as Montpellier Business School or other centers, particularly in Bordeaux, have been associated. It was important to us that beyond delivering research from our Montpellier units, this publication also illustrates some collaborations among the multiple partnerships existing between French research centers. The quality of these relationships, which does not exclude some competition as well as has real emulation, is indeed fundamental. We are delighted by the richness of these structural or more ephemeral research networks, which make it possible to focus our energy on the major challenges that the sector faces.

Approaches and results of recent work are presented in chapters of about 20 pages, on various themes in their disciplines and objects, and converge towards themes related to strategies and competitiveness of companies and the sector, faced with classic challenges (market adaptation, management, etc.) or those which have appeared more recently (climate change, Big Data, etc.).

Then, there is a renewed ambition to provide tools, reading grids, illustrations and reference case studies to the various actors in the sector, and without refraining from using them for managerial and operational recommendations.

I.2. Why a second volume? Objectives, additions, new themes and new authors

There are many questions which are constantly renewed. The first volume had naturally been unable to answer all of the issues raised, as wide as the panorama presented at the time could have been. Some themes were not taken up, others were elaborated upon and some others were finally addressed. Thus, questions specific to the sector, ways of approaching climate change, the “coopetition” between organizations in the same region and the particular role of innovation in a sector, which has made tradition into the DNA of its institutions as much as its primary axis of communication, had been particularly analyzed in dedicated chapters.

Some themes, which were also discussed in 2021, are explored in greater depth, for instance, export strategies of cooperatives, consumption and markets open to export in Africa, or certain modes of communication, such as storytelling, and spaces closed or opened by the Évin law. Finally, we address new themes in this volume, with illustrations and appropriate application cases, which are in various fields of the social sciences: economics with environmental changes or the concept of “cluster” (with the Montpellier case), strategic marketing (the positioning common to certain associated terroirs), operational marketing (such as communication or wine tourism) or management, whether that of stocks or that of digital data.

In most cases, the reader will find food for thought to help them to better understand the industry’s current issues, which are often the result of critical situations. Thus, the organic wine market, which had nevertheless experienced a historic take-off in the last decade and which is now encountering new difficulties, is approached here from the original angle of “willingness to pay”, a valuable behavioral and experimental economy tool developed recently. Similarly, the indispensable but always difficult dialogue between research and professionals can be enriched by the approach provided by the “cluster” concept. How can we not make crises experienced today resonate against the background of product “deconsumption”, which has not been a basic necessity for a long time, with the difficult but happy initiatives of building strong collective positioning and images as in Beaujolais or in the volcanic Loire region?

The issue of wine estate acquisition is of particular interest, not only because of the emblematic “Petrus” case of which is discussed in particular, but also because of questions raised by the evaluation of price and the “emotional” value of such companies.

I.3. Recent context of the wine sector and “new” challenges

These motivations for a second book were encouraged by a particular context, generating a series of commercial as well as organizational and even institutional challenges for sectoral actors. Among these contextual elements, several are directly related to the characteristics of the sector and the product.

The wine sector is deemed to be fragmented between many players of different sizes and governance. Indeed, listed groups coexist with smaller structures, including small family SMEs. All of these actors belong to different families, are at different stages of the value chain and have varied governance: farms, anchored in a family for generations or on the contrary composed of financial investors, cooperatives and traders. Organizations are legion in the sector, depending on professions, wine types or producing regions. There is a frequent temptation to merge, concentrate or simply organize to better weigh in the competitive universe and try to better adapt to it.

Thus, Chapter 10 presents the process of finding a common positioning to promote wines of four vineyards of the Massif Central. This implementation is fraught with difficulties. Indeed, a collective project implies uniting different entities that must act together and these entities themselves have, within them, actors with different and sometimes contradictory visions of the project. Bringing these actors together proved to be a difficult challenge, but one that was able to succeed by force of will and participatory method.

Chapter 12 proposes another example of collective construction, resulting from the collaboration between a regional brand, Vins d’Alsace, and a Bacchic society, the Confrérie Saint-Étienne, showing the benefits that can be derived from this collaboration.

And to go even further in this collective dimension, Chapter 11 shows how an old but still very active cluster, the Montpellier Vine and Wine cluster, by bringing together many actors in the sector, including teacher-researchers, students, experts, policies, collective bodies, producers, etc., and making them interact, makes it possible to increase the competitiveness of companies and the sector as a whole.

As another illustration of collective strategies, Chapter 16 presents the particular situation of cooperatives and cooperative unions facing the same export problem. It shows that, overall, cooperatives and their unions export less than other companies in the sector. This phenomenon is more pronounced for cooperatives that appear less well adapted than cooperative unions to export their wines....