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Examines the alternatives available for the Champagne producers and marketers to overcome the serious consequences the present recession has brought upon them. Recommendations are made to formulate and develop a strategic basis for turning the tide by means of linking the ethical and quality aspects of Champagne production to marketing activities. Lessons for producers of other wines are also given.

This article seeks to identify the type of producers most likely to deviate from category-based expectations in the pursuit of profit. I describe circumstances under which a category’s core members are, paradoxically, more likely (than its peripheral members) to deviate. This phenomenon reflects market participants’ default expectations about core members and the resulting bias in information-search processes. I offer empirical evidence of Champagne producers getting involved in “buyer’s own brands” (BOB), a behavior that is not directly observed yet deviates considerably from grape suppliers’ category-based expectations. The econometric analysis leverages an exogenous shock that increased the scrutiny of BOB by grape suppliers. I find that before the shock, BOB products were more likely to be supplied by “traditional” houses – which grape suppliers view as core industry members and hence as being above suspicion in that regard. I discuss the implications of these results for prior work in this area as well as the article’s contribution to extant literature.

The purpose of the paper is to describe the attempt of a family champagne house to redefine its business organization as a family in a large family of families. This choice involves defining their activities as entrepreneuring in a specific time and space that all actors experience as their sensible reality. To describe the whole process, the authors call this ensemble a “chronotope,” including the same space and time as part of a common story. The authors assess this narrative strategy in reference to both past conflict in the champagne business and to the present crisis caused by the pandemic in addition to a series of social, economic and environmental changes in the environment.

The design of the paper corresponds to the case of a champagne family house in its environment with a longitudinal, processual approach of the family business venture before and especially after its sale and buyback by the family. The authors use Bakhtin to insist on the fictional nature of the account of most events as most protagonists adopt different perspectives. The Taittinger family, at the head of the trade house, creates a story that fits in all these perspectives and makes sense to overcome key issues in the business.

Our findings illustrate the role of the chronotope as a way to broaden the scope of inter- and intra-family relations. This concept also shows the importance of shared experiences, stories and crafted practices to sustain collective work and the meaning associated with the result of this work, in this case, champagne wine. The authors also show the different styles of chronotopes and their role in binding together actors in relation to the transformation of their activities.

The research limitations are of two kinds. The first limitation comes from the choice to focus on the Taittinger family house, as it tends to focus the analysis on their point of view. The second limitation is due to the persistence of the pandemic situation that makes it difficult to test the chronotope idea as it is quite recent. Because of the current pandemic, it is complicated to anticipate what the future could look like and therefore, to imagine the future dimension of the chronotope. To overcome this limit, the authors suggest different scenario that leaves open different possibilities.

The practical implications of this paper could be to see how family business entrepreneurs may benefit from designing their strategy as a rich personal fiction in reference to a chronotope instead of referring to storytelling, communication and brand management or even competition strictly speaking. In turbulent times and to face grand challenges, long-term collaborations require stronger ties and imagination without leaving out emotions. Yet the entrepreneurs may become a victim of their own fictions if stakeholders perceive contradictions or if they were to dislike the new episodes the family invents.

The social implications of this case study show the role of business relations built on fiction reflecting strong ties and shared processes such as entrepreneuring in the world of heritage goods where sustainability and endurance matter. This perspective insists on a shared story and it contrasts with more discontinued approaches based on disruptive innovation, opportunism and competitiveness in turbulent times. The chronotope does not ineluctably evolve in different ways, making actors’ perspective shrink, expand or exile. Family entrepreneuring may actively influence this transformation and they may also be framed by it.

The originality of the paper comes from the description of a family business in its environment as a chronotope. Reflecting how related actors in a business field like champagne co-construct a representation, the authors looked for a concept that would accurately reflect this vision, researchers chose the concept of “chronotope,” borrowing from narrative approaches. This approach is transdisciplinary. It is also an attempt to bring researchers at work closer to what actors in the field experiment with and find inspiration in.

Champagne is bought with low frequency and many consumers most likely do not have or seek full information on the quality of champagne. Some consumers may rely on the reputation of particular brands, e.g. “Les Grandes Marques”, some consumers choose to gain information from sensory ratings of champagne. The aim of this paper is to analyse the champagne prices on the Scandinavian markets by applying a hedonic price function in a comparative framework with minimal models using sensory ratings.

Consumers optimize the quality–price relationship when buying champagne by seeking only the necessary market information. Within a search model framework, they choose between costless information from sensory ratings and using time for seeking information on the quality attributes of the champagnes. The model is tested on data for the Scandinavian markets in an econometric skeleton.

The retail prices of the champagnes on the Scandinavian markets can be fairly well explained by a hedonic price function. However, the ratings by the wine experts, especially Robert Parker, do just as well in terms of explaining the retail prices of champagnes.

Assuming that sensory ratings by wine experts reflect the true quality of champagne, which is supported by the results in this paper, it hardly pays for normal consumers to use resources on seeking detailed information on champagne quality. Thus, sensory rating is an efficient guide to optimize the quality–price relationship.

Champagne prices are normally analysed using experimental techniques. In our paper, champagne prices are analysed using a search model and tested on market data. Furthermore, the issue on expert ratings vs quality attributes as the optimal price predictor is expanded to the champagne market too.

The traditional view of the process of value creation suggests that it occurs inside the firm through its activities or resources. However, there are special cases where firms create value using external shared resources, e.g. a territorial brand. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how the combination of both internal and external resources co-create value in wine regions.

An in-depth case study of nine firms covering different co-creation processes in Champagne, France. The selection of interviews was designed to cover the diversity of firms within the area with different market positioning. Most firms in the region have been selling champagne for more than 50 years, so they have established long-standing relationships with their markets.

While there is only one value, Champagne, firms create many different values based on owners’ perceptions with diverse effects on the process of value co-creation in the territorial brand. Some firms have strategies which could deteriorate the value of shared resource. This threat needs institutional changes with unknown consequences on the territorial brand.

The research only involved one case study with a highly developed territorial brand system. There are multiple wine regions that have considered managing either implicitly or explicitly their shared strategic resources (e.g. a territorial brand). Consequently, the findings may not be applicable to all wine regions but it can provide a “gold standard” for regions and wineries that do not realize the impact that their value creation actions can have on the wine region.

Collective management of shared strategic resources, such as a territorial brand, can be a powerful action to sustain competitive advantage rather than individual actions to develop individual brands. However, it can work only with an institutional organization managing the collective process.

The paper offers lessons from a comprehensive and well-known case study where resource bundles co-create value with a territorial brand.

From the early 1900's the French champagne industry has been ruthless in its political and legal battles to protect the name of champagne whether from usurpation by foreign wine producers or from makers of non‐wine products (www.champagnemagic.com). In 2003 a new weapon was added to the armoury. A consumer advertising campaign incorporating five book mark — sized teasers have posed such questions as “Washington apples from Nevada?” and “Alaska salmon from Florida?” The questions are answered in full page adverts which explain why champagne can only come from Champagne (www.champagne.fr).

Subsequent to the First World War, the French Government regulated the Champagne industry, and locked the status of protected (and excluded) grapes into the new Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée system, forever altering the incentives and output of wine producers. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

As a result, some indigenous varietals have disappeared entirely from the region – and a handful remain only in the vineyards and bottles of a few bold entrepreneurs, constituting less than 1 percent of Champagne production.

The authors assess several traditional explanations (from taste and preferences to agricultural resilience)-and dismiss them as unconvincing. Instead, the authors adopt a public choice framework of regulatory capture to explain the puzzle of thwarted entrepreneurship and consumer choice.

This paper is original.

Digital technologies are changing the ways in which the meanings and identity of both consumers and brands are constructed. This research aims to extend knowledge of how consumer-made “selfie” images shared in social media might contribute to the destabilization of brands as assemblages.

Insights are drawn from a critical visual content analysis of three popular champagne brand accounts and consumer-made selfies featuring these brands in Instagram.

This study shows how brands and branded selves intersect through “heterotopian selfie practices”. Accentuated by the rise of attention economy and “consumer microcelebrity”, the authors argue that these proliferating selfie images can destabilize spatial, temporal, symbolic and material properties of brand assemblages.

The implications include a consideration of how selfie practices engender new challenges for brand design and brand management.

This study illustrates how a brand assemblage approach can guide investigations of brands at multiple scales of analysis. In particular, this paper extends knowledge of visual brand-related user-generated content in terms of how consumers express, visualize and share selfies and how the heterotopian quality of this sharing consequently shapes brand assemblages.

The purpose of this paper is to present a model and simulation results for the corporate financial value of an industry in a cobweb economy. Production‐consumption cycles affect profit and financial needs in terms of equity and debt capital, and thus corporate value over time. The model is applied to the Champagne industry.

The paper simulates the financial value of Champagne makers by taking into account developments on the Champagne market and the short‐ and long‐term responses by input suppliers and Champagne makers. Financial modeling is combined with a vertical coordination model of production and consumption in a cobweb economy.

This paper makes theoretical advances in modeling the impact of short‐ and long‐run temporal tensions in production decisions on the financial value of processors. Temporal tensions are central to the decisions made by input suppliers (grape growers) and processors (Champagne makers) as they negotiate in a context of vertical coordination in a cobweb economy. Financial aggregates are forecast by the model and used as market multiples for estimating corporate financial value. Furthermore, this research strengthens previously published simulation studies in agriculture and food markets since system dynamics (SD) is applied in modeling both input production and consumption and the processor's financial value. SD modeling is well suited to simulation in a critical context, and Champagne makers find themselves in such a context: the Champagne protected designation of origin (PDO) area has reached its legally authorized size limit, while world demand continues to grow.

The market for corporate control of Champagne makers is active. The model presented is a useful guide for decision makers because it improves the anticipation of corporate value and improves understanding of the future of value creation in a legal framework currently considering revision of both authorized annual yield (short‐run decision) and the size of the appellation area (long‐run decision).

Two original features of this paper add specific value to the existing research: first, the theory is enlarged to capture the temporal tensions affecting decision making by input suppliers and processors operating in a cobweb economy, and deduce processors' financial value using financial aggregates forecast by the model. Second, the SD simulation method is applied in modeling input production and consumption and processors' financial value.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the engagement of Australian consumers when buying and drinking Champagne.

The paper identified seven variables a priori that were expected to influence consumers' decisions and then used exploratory interviews to investigate how Champagne consumers were influenced by these. The authors interviewed Champagne marketers, sellers, educators, connoisseurs and aspirational consumers. The interview protocol allowed respondents to identify other variables.

The paper identified two new variables that, inter alia, influence Australian consumers in their Champagne selection. These were the kudos that comes from the people they serve or give it to and their sentimentality about previous experiences of Champagne consumption. The two new variables are the focus of this paper.

The exploratory nature of this research means larger studies are needed to confirm the preliminary findings, particularly in other, non Anglo‐Saxon cultures.

Champagne houses could place greater emphasis on kudos and sentimentality in their marketing campaigns; additionally cultural issues could affect how the two factors operate in different markets.

Kudos and sentimentality have not been previously emphasised in the wine consumer behaviour literature.