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The success of the Australian wine industry is well documented. However, there have been few comparative studies of the reasons for this success as compared to Australia's main competitors. Most of the anecdotal evidence and trade publications focus on “value for money” and fruit‐driven wines, without looking at how the Australian wine businesses operate. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the external environment in France and Australia as one of the drivers for Australian wine sector success.

In‐depth interviews with two French and two Australian wineries and a review of the literature led to a series of hypotheses about the role of market orientation, strategic orientation, innovative and entrepreneurial environment orientation, constraining legislation, industry infrastructure usage, industry plan support, and interorganizational collaboration as factors differentiating the two countries. An online survey of wineries in the two countries resulted in a sample of 82 French and 63 Australian responses. An analysis of variance revealed significant differences between Australian wineries as compared to the French.

Australian wineries rated themselves higher in market orientation, growth strategy, export proactiveness, perceived innovative environment, perceived entrepreneurial environment, more interorganizational collaboration, and less perceived constraining legislation.

These results not only provide some basis for Australia's success in wine exporting, but also add to the literature on the effect of the external environment on business performance.

Wine exporting countries can use the results to help shape policy for creating a more conducive environment for exporting wine.

Faced with major new challenges in a rapidly evolving world market, small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the wine sector in the Bordeaux region urgently need to reconsider their strategic options. This paper, through an analysis of the nature, role, and interaction of competencies in strategy‐making processes in the wine sector, aims to identify the main components of wine companies’ competencies in order to devise a tool to aid their strategic decision making.

The research methodology, which is based on a cognitive approach, employs critical incidences methodology, content analysis and causal mapping.

A competencies study founded on a series of interviews conducted with the personnel of six wine SMEs in the Bordeaux region reveals the importance of eight core competencies (production, labour, costs, quality, investment, market, competition, and clients/sales) in devising strategy. In addition, this paper demonstrates that core factors affecting the success of strategic development include: knowledge versus know‐how; investment, quality; labour difficulties, team issues, market positioning; customer relationship and trust. The implications of the practical implementation of these results are discussed.

Shows the future prospects for French wine companies not being taken for granted. On account of radical market changes the French wine sector needs to re‐evaluate the situation and investigate new strategic options that might permit it to regain a competitive advantage in a changing environment.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term branded marketing events (BMEs), and examine the role of its experiential components as a strategic tool for the facilitation of customer brand engagement. This study examines five experiential components of BMEs at events held in Australia and France to determine their respective impact on customer brand engagement.

Surveys were distributed to attendees of ten events by six wine brands in South Australia, and six events in five sub-regions of Bordeaux.

Findings suggest that BMEs influence customers’ brand engagement and brand purchase intention in both Australia and France. However, the experiential components within the events had differing effects. Australian customers were influenced by cognitive, sensorial, and relational experiences and their increased customer brand engagement strongly influenced brand purchase intention. French customers, however, required pragmatic event experiences to build brand engagement.

Recognizing their mutual experiential and interactive foundations, this study integrates the research domains of marketing events, customer experiences and customer brand engagement, and contributes to the strategic understanding of how branded event experiences facilitate customer brand engagement.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the differences in terms of economic and financial performance, between family firms (FFs) and non-family firms (NFFs) in the wine sector in Italy and France, where this sector is one of the most representative national economic activities.

This study is based on a sample of Italian and France companies operating in the wine sector. The sample, including medium and large firms, includes 288 FFs and 302 NFFs, for a total of 590 firms. Amadeus database represents the data source. According to Astrachan and Kolenko (1994), a firm is classified as a FF if family had to own over 50 per cent of the business in a private company or more than 10 per cent of a public company.

This study confirms that the family variable is relevant to achieve good economic and financial performance, and endow firms with different features. In terms of economic performance, FFs both in Italy and France outperform in. terms of return on equity and return on assets, though only Italian NFFs outperform in earnings before interest and taxes. In terms of financial performance, both in Italy and France NFFs outperform FFs in current ratio and liquidity ratio, while FFs outperform in solvency ratio.

Limitations of the study concern the method adopted, as it could be integrated with some econometrical models. The implications of the paper are relevant for families and regulatory bodies because it helps them to better understand the effects of governance on economic and financial performance. Moreover, the findings of the study can influence the decision-making process of investors in order to identify the long-term outperformers listed on a stock exchange.

This study contributes to the literature on family businesses phenomenon on wine sector, which represents one of the most representative of the economy of several countries and in which family businesses are widespread.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structural characteristics, the governance and the performance of two French and Italian groups of wine cooperatives, with two objectives in mind. On one hand, the study will analyse the presence of similarities between the characteristics of the two groups of companies which were founded in the same period within a similar legal framework; on the other, it will study the presence of links between the strategic policy of the companies and their structural, governance and performance characteristics.

The study uses survey data obtained from interviews with 25 wine cooperatives. It covers the topics of their structure, organisation, strategies, management and performance in Italy (specifically in Umbria, a region in the centre of Italy), and in France (in Languedoc‐Roussillon, a region in southern France). Other indicators of performance, calculated from the balance sheets of the companies, were added to this analysis, and a careful analysis was drawn up to check the factors which condition the performance of the companies.

The main finding underlines some strong differentiating elements between those cooperatives selling the biggest part of their production as bulk wine and those selling it as packaged wine. But the first situation does not lead automatically to inferring a decline or an involution of these cooperatives. On the contrary, the mitigated performances that were found clearly question whether there is a strategic evolution towards more specialisation (intermediate phases of product transformation, leading to business‐to‐business differentiation strategies) which could be more profitable for their growers‐owners than further integration towards packaged wine sales.

The analysis deals with the problem of performance and governance of the transformation cooperative companies in the wine sector, which produce more than 50 percent of the entire wine production both in France and Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the leverage of French wine companies (410 companies) in the wine industry during the period 2000‐2004.

Different classical capital structure theories are reviewed (trade‐off theory (TOT), pecking order theory (POT) and dynamic TOT) in order to formulate testable propositions concerning the determinants of debt levels of the French wine companies. A number of regression models (classical and panel techniques) are developed to test the static theory of trade‐off against the POT.

The results suggest that POT seems to better explain leverage of French wine companies. Significant differences in debt ratio were found between cooperatives and other legal structures. Debt ratios are also different between sub‐sectors (wholesalers, wine growers, wine makers, etc.).

Cost of capital is one of the pillars of competitive advantage (or disadvantage) of companies. With the objective to minimize the cost of capital, it seems very important to know the potential determinants of an optimal capital structure.

This is a first study of capital structure determinants in the French wine industry which contributes to the current debate between competitive capital structure theories.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of market orientation on strategy orientation (communication, target and image strategy). This impact is studied by using a multicultural approach (Hungarian and French wineries).

A questionnaire was completed by 131 French wineries – châteaux and 66 Hungarian wineries. French wineries are located in the Bordeaux region. Participants were obtained by sending questionnaire to wineries lists provided by wine‐related organizations. Market orientation and strategy orientation scales were constructed by using confirmatory factor analysis and this impact confirmed by using structural equation modelling. To measure the differences of this impact between French and Hungarian wineries, multigroup analysis is practiced.

Market orientation as information gathering, and difficulties involved in searching and planning are defined. Concerning the impact of market orientation on strategy orientation, the main finding is that information gathering and planning impacts positively on the development of communication and target strategies; and the difficulties involved in searching for information impact positively on image strategy. Two main differences appear between French and Hungarian wineries: information gathering and difficulties in searching for information.

One main limit concerns the characteristics of Hungarian and French wineries that are not similar especially in terms of area size. So these cultural differences could be also explained by structural differences of the wineries.

The majority of wineries do not have organized and large information gathering systems and marketing strategies are defined by communication objectives because they have some difficulties in defining their target.

The paper shows how image and communication strategies are implemented in Hungarian and French wineries.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the difficulties raised by the question of cultural differences in consumption behaviour studies, and proposes the best‐worst method as a tool for comparing data from a cross‐national survey.

Data were collected from samples of wine consumers from Australia (n = 283), the UK (n = 304) and France (n = 147), using the BW procedure, where respondents have to assess what are the most and the least important attributes when choosing a wine at a restaurant.

Results show differences between the countries, with a clear contrast between the French, on the one hand, and the Australians and British, on the other. They confirm empirically the idea that the country may be a valid “culti unit” in cross‐cultural research.

The authors suggest that the method works well in the context of this research, but does not avoid some of the uncontrollable biases of declarative data, nor the question of the relevance of some choice items in cultural contexts that can be very diverse (such as the role of a waiter in a restaurant).

The paper shows that the method can be used quite easily in a large number of studies where it is important to hierarchize choice cues and compare different segments of a population.

This fairly large scale study contributes to the marketing literature dealing with country of origin as a segmentation criteria, and exploring the concept and measurement of “cultural difference”. Finally, it fosters a scarce literature dealing with consumer behaviour in “on premise” situations.

Within a competing global food market marketing strategies become ever more important; in Italy an important marketing strategy in the wine sector focuses on the so‐called designations of origins (Appellations). This paper aims to analyse the public perception of regional wines with designation of origins.

A semi‐structured questionnaire was administered to a sample of wine consumers in national wine shows in Rome and the provinces. The questionnaire aimed at testing consumers' knowledge and preferences toward wines with a designation of origin produced within the Lazio region. A multivariate analysis has clustered consumers according to their behaviors in relation to wines with a designation of origin. A perception analysis relative to the knowledge and meaning of designations of origins was further performed. The latter has made it possible to rank regional wines and to establish the market effect of designations of origin.

With regard to behaviors toward wines with a designation of origin, the data suggest three ideal‐types of customers: “sensible” (i.e. customers knowledgeable of the meaning of designations of origins); “indifferent”; and “thrifty” (i.e. customers who understand the importance of designation of origins but are also conscious of price). The conclusions indicate that a designation of origin is a necessary but not a sufficient factor for having a good market performance.

Implications in terms of marketing strategies are evident: wine production is characterized by different worlds of production and marketing strategies should be consequential.

The enthusiasm towards designations of origin is not always justified: the proliferation of designations of origin can de‐sensitize consumers with dramatic effects on rural territories whose economy rotates around the production of quality wines. Organizational adjustment and more efficient communication strategies are indeed necessary complements to obtaining an appellation.

The literature argues on ambiguous impacts of different types of the common agricultural policy (CAP) subsidies on farm technical efficiency (TE). The purpose of this paper is to estimate and analyse the TE and the impact of the CAP subsidies on the TE of wine farms in Hungary using the farm accountancy data network data set in the period 2013–2019.

The authors use stochastic frontiers analysis (SFA) models to estimate the TE scores for the Hungarian wine farms with four wine farm-level inputs in terms of agricultural land, labour, capital and intermediate consumption. The TE scores are explained by the CAP subsidies and economic wine farm size. The different SFA models were applied with robustness tests to investigate the drivers of the TE values of wineries.

Like for Hungarian farms in general, the distribution of the wine farm structure is a dual with a greater number of smaller wine farms and a smaller number of bigger wine farms. The agricultural land, capital and intermediate consumption are significantly positively associated with the wine farm TE. With higher capital intensity wine farm TE increase. The results imply that the CAP subsidies decrease the TE of the Hungarian wine farms, whereas economic farm size increase.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first specific efficiency studies on the wine sector in the Central and Eastern European region and the first one for Hungary to evaluate the TE at wine farm level and to assess the impact of CAP subsidies and economic farm size on wine farm (in)efficiency to apply production technologies and use farm resources. This study is among the first that applied the fixed-effects stochastic frontier model at the wine farm level to measure the drivers of the TE scores.