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The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of service quality on the formation of destination brand equity through customer satisfaction at a winery, from the perspective of Chinese wine tourists.

This study utilized a survey research design. A convenience sample of 311 visitors to a major winery located in Yantai, China, was surveyed, and 265 useable questionnaires were analyzed. To analyze the data, the study used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results of the study reveal that service quality at a winery is a significant determinant of winery satisfaction among Chinese wine tourists, which in turn affects the brand equity of a wine tourism destination.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature focusing on identity-based branding in the context of wine tourism. As such, this study brings together knowledge of a place branding dimension (i.e. destination brand equity), satisfaction and tourism experience at a winery.

The results suggest that the road to favorable assessments of a wine destination brand (macro level) go through a satisfying experience at a winery (micro level). Therefore, the need to co-create the wine experience through various stakeholders' involvement is crucial for the success of wine tourism.

Extant wine studies often highlight western wine tourists' behavior and examine central behavioral constructs such as winery service quality and satisfaction. This study extends previous research by: (1) investigating the issue from Chinese wine tourists' perspective and (2) integrating the destination brand equity of a wine region to current investigations that commonly focus on the service quality of a winery and wine tourists' satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the service quality dimensions that influence satisfaction with wineries and future intentions to return among Chinese consumers. With the rapidly growing popularity of wine consumption among Chinese consumers, an increasing number of Chinese consumers are visiting wineries in Western countries. However, while substantial research about wine tourism in Western countries has been published, there is very little research available with respect to wine tourism in China and the Chinese winery visitors who visit them.

A convenience sampling method was selected. Specifically, snowball sampling was used to collect the study’s data due to the limited number of Chinese consumers who drink wine and who have been involved with wine tourism. Research assistants who speak Chinese fluently used snowball sampling to recruit Chinese consumers in Yentai region who had participated in wine tourism in the past and asked them to complete the research survey. The research assistants distributed 200 surveys through a snowball sampling and collected a total of 179 responses.

The study’s results suggest that wine tasting operations, such as a variety of wines at tasting room tastings, and the quality of the wines tasted, along with staff attitudes are critical components that influence Chinese wine tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The major contribution of this paper is that it builds on extant wine tourism literature by providing insights into the characteristics of Chinese wine tourists. The paper also illuminates the linkage between winery service quality attributes and Chinese wine tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The results of the study provide a useful guide to both academics and winery operators interested in developing a competitive winery service quality strategy for Chinese wine tourists.

Given the scarcity of literature linking winery service quality attributes and Chinese wine tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty, this study is one of the few studies to explore this relationship.

The aims of this study were to investigate the influencing factors of wine tourism development in China, assess the marketing efforts made by the wine-tourism stakeholders, and provide constructive suggestions for the development of China's wine tourism.

A qualitative approach was adopted for the purposes of this research. The study site is the Bohai Bay wine region in Shandong Province, the birthplace of China's modern wine industry and the largest wine-producing area in China. Chateau Changyu-Castel and Chateau Junding were visited in June 2010. Qualitative data were collected in the forms of observations of the wineries, interviews with wine tourists, focus groups with tourism practitioners, and analyses of travel blogs, document excerpts, and official web sites. Content analysis produced a thematic framework on people, promotion, and place.

A number of facilitating and detrimental factors were revealed pertaining to China's wine tourism development on the three themes: people, promotion, and place.

The number of wine tourists being interviewed is relatively small, and the wineries chosen are relatively large ones. Results may not be generalized to other wine tourists and wineries in China.

The paper includes implications for the development of wine tourism in China, such as food and wine pairing that combines wine with local (Chinese) cuisine at the wineries, positioning, and genuine government support.

Research on wine tourism and wine tourists in China is scant. The current research fills a research gap by examining China's wine tourism phenomena from multiple perspectives, including those of tourists, tourism practitioners, and wine tourism destinations.

This paper aims to examine the primary determinants of Chinese consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions of imported organic wines.

This study used a multi-stage data collection via multiple sampling techniques. Data were collected from close to 2,000 Chinese wine drinkers across 33 provincial-level administrative units in China. The consumer data were subject to a two-step structural equation modeling analysis.

Chinese consumers express favorable attitudes and are interested in making a purchase. The results also reveal distinct influences of cognitive and emotional determinants on consumers’ positive attitudes and purchase intentions of organic wines. Health benefits and symbolic value positively influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. Emotional assessment of organic wines, despite exhibiting a positive effect on attitudes, does not drive Chinese consumers’ purchase decisions.

China has become a world leader in consuming wines, especially wines imported from traditional wine producing countries. The increasing health concerns have also prompted Chinese consumers toward favoring organic products. Despite the evident shift in Chinese consumers’ travel expenditure toward food and wines and the growing wine consumption while dining out, existing research is scant in explaining the decision drivers of Chinese consumers’ organic wine purchase. A greater and deeper understanding of Chinese consumers’ purchase decision of organic wines not only provides marketing intelligence for countries exporting wines to China but also is meaningful for international destinations to capture a lucrative market to support local attractions and hospitality businesses.

This study aims to examine the components and evolution of the Chinese wine festival market using the Dalian International Wine and Dine Festival (DIWDF) as a case study.

Adopting a longitudinal approach, survey data were collected from attendees of the first, fifth and seventh DIWDF in 2012, 2016 and 2018, respectively. Cluster analysis segmented attendees by wine and festival experience and consumption features. Comparative analysis was conducted to examine segment differences by demography, festival motivation, satisfaction and intention. Changes in segments over time were examined across the three times.

The following three clusters were identified: “wine-novice fest-newbies,” “occasional drinker fest-goers” and “wine-lover fest-enthusiasts.” Over the study period, the proportion of “wine-lover fest-enthusiasts” increased significantly while the percentages of the other two segments decreased, demonstrating the evolution of the Chinese wine festival market and their consumer impacts.

This study offers straightforward indicators of market value via consumption features for both wine businesses and festival organizers. The characteristics of the segments and their inter-linkage have important implications for developing product mix, targeting strategies, festival service design and market development.

This is the first known empirical research globally to investigate relationships among market segments both horizontally (differences between segments) and vertically (development over time) and to incorporate both wine- and festival-related consumption features.

In India, Nashik District of Maharashtra State is a major Indian wine-producing region. This study aims to critically explore multiple aspects of an area and bring to the forefront of various sociological or educational variables (Kerlinger, 1973). The variables can help in the generation of the conjectures and premises.

Methodologically, to explore the wine sector in the Nashik District of India total 304 number of wine products and its pricing along with a total 26 number of wineries attributes has evaluated by collecting details of different product attributes of wine products and retail pricing. These were regressed with backward integration to arrive at the characteristics that govern wine prices. Concerning their motivation for wine tourism, a survey of 197 visitors conducted. Seven winery owners/ officials were interviewed that includes the Coordinator of the Wineries association. The interview schedule included open-ended questions. Thus, providing more in-depth insight into the wine sector in the Nashik District of India.

An investigation of the wine industry in the Nashik district of India suggests the potential for combined effects between wineries, local communities and the economy by discovering the sociological or educational variables associated with the considered geographic region.

The research is the field study aimed at discovering the relations or interactions among sociological or educational variables. There can be variables beyond the considered variables affecting the wine product mix and pricing, wine tourism motivation factors and the factors responsible for the economic development of the region.

The empirical research throws light on an unexplored wine-producing region and its potential impact on livelihood. The exploratory study discovers the interactions among educational variables, as asserted by Kerlinger (1973). It can also help in the generation of premises about the wine sector from the area.

The purpose of this study was to examine pathways towards, and the rationale behind internationalisation from the perspectives of micro firms' operators involved in the globally competitive wine industry. Moreover, drawing from entrepreneurial action theory, the study developed a theoretical framework to help understanding micro approaches and rationale for internationalisation.

Data were collected through interviews with 19 micro winery owners and managers operating in the Prosecco Superiore (Italy) and cava industry (Spain).

Aligned with entrepreneurial action theory, uncertainty in participants' environment, coupled with the associated need to diversify through exports, were predominant drivers of internationalisation. However, internationalisation also emerged through non-deliberate channels, including through growth of wine tourism and increasing foreign wine enthusiasts. Thus, while entrepreneurial action through deliberate means triggered a stronger focus on internationalisation, other passive interventions beyond the control or influence of micro firms, but rather emerge serendipitously, can similarly spur direct action.

The study demonstrated its originality and value in various ways, fundamentally, addressing three knowledge gaps, thereby contributing to practical and theoretical discourses with corresponding value, including managerially. First, it extended literature focussing on micro firms, which as compared to small and medium enterprise research is much more limited. Second, it provided a comparative component, which is much rarer in contemporary research discussing internationalisation amongst micro firms. Third, the study proposed a theoretical framework stemming from the chosen inductive approach, thus, addressing concerns regarding the lack of theoretical rigour or depth in internationalisation activities amongst micro firms.

Data-driven market segmentation is heavily used by academic tourism and hospitality researchers to create knowledge and by data analysts in tourism industry to generate market insights. The stability of market segmentation solutions across repeated calculations is a key quality indicator of a segmentation solution. Yet, stability is typically ignored, risking that the segmentation solution arrived at is random. This study aims to offer an overview of market segmentation analysis and propose a new procedure to increase the stability of market segmentation solutions derived from binary data.

The authors propose a new method – based on two independently proposed algorithms – to increase the stability of market segmentation solutions. They demonstrate the superior performance of the new method using empirical data.

The proposed approach uses k-means as base algorithm and combines the variable selection method proposed by Brusco (2004) with the global stability analysis introduced by Dolnicar and Leisch (2010). This new approach increases the stability of segmentation solutions by simultaneously selecting variables and numbers of segments.

The new approach can be adopted immediately by academic researchers and industry data analysts alike to improve the quality of market segmentation solutions derived from empirical tourist data. Higher quality market segmentation solutions translate into competitive advantage and increased business or destination performance.

The proposed approach is newly developed in this study. It helps industry data analysts and academic researchers to reduce the risk of deriving random segmentation solutions by analyzing the data in a systematic way, then selecting the most stable solution using the segmentation variables contributing to this most stable solution only.

Internet-famous food (also known as “online celebrity” food) is very popular in the digital age. This study aims to investigate consumer attitudes and understand consumer behavior towards Internet-famous food.

The authors collected 136,835 online comments regarding “Internet-famous food” from Dianping platform between 2016 and 2019 using a web scraper. A sentiment lexicon for Internet-famous food was constructed, and sentiment analysis is further conducted to understand consumer attitudes. Additionally, the authors use topic analysis and time series analysis to study consumer behavior.

Sentiment analysis showed that the number of consumers' comments decreased over time with the attitudes being overall positive, and the Internet-famous food industry has a positive prospect; time series analysis showed that the consumption of Internet-famous food was not affected by the season; topic analysis showed that consumers' comments on Internet-famous food were rich with a large variety, covering food categories, brand, quality, service, environment and price.

To the authors’ knowledge, limited research has focused on public opinions regarding “Internet-famous food”. This is the first study on consumer behavior towards Internet-famous food. This article provides a unique insight into the purchasing behavior and attitude of Chinese Internet-famous food consumers through text mining.

The study aims to introduce a comprehensive segmentation instrument that incorporates the push–pull winescape attributes, providing a new perspective of the wine tourist profile and explaining their behavioural intentions in the Australian winescape.

A literature review, focus groups and expert panels generated an extensive list of push–pull winescape attributes. Pen-and-paper surveys conveniently sampled 739 wine tourists at three wineries across three wine regions in Australia. Adopting push–pull winescape attributes as the segmentation base, cluster analysis identified four segments, namely, inspireds, self-drivens, market-drivens and inerts, and their behavioural intentions were examined.

Inspireds demonstrate both self- and market-motivation. Self-drivens exhibit self-motivation but limited market-motivation, whereas Market-drivens characterise market-motivation but limited self-motivation. Inerts are limited in both market- and self-motivations. At the Swan Valley, all four segments were identified, with Inspireds being the most willing to revisit and recommend to others and Inerts, the least willing. At the Barossa Valley, only two segments emerged. Again, Inspireds and Inerts were the most and least willing to revisit and recommend to others respectively. Finally, at the Yarra Valley, three segments were identified. Market-drivens were most willing to revisit and recommend to others, followed by self-drivens and lastly, by inerts.

A comprehensive push–pull winescape segmentation base of wine tourists is introduced, which provides a more sophisticated profile of wine tourist segments than otherwise would be attained with conventional measures.

New insights into who the wine tourist is and what it is they seek from the winescape are vital to smaller wine producers whose best access to the domestic retail and export markets is through direct selling at the cellar door.

The empirically tested 18-item push–pull winescape instrument presents a comprehensive segmentation approach, which profiles wine tourists and predicts their behavioural intentions based on an extensive investigation of push–pull winescape attributes.