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Government regulation affects “the economics of what's‐in‐a‐name” in the U.S.A. and Italy, as well as in other nations. The paper briefly explores some of the economic implications of creating viticultural appellations or geographic districts. Among the issues examined are the exclusivity principle, the problem of the commons, the value of governmental approval, and consumer issues. Also, several U.S. anomalies are introduced and discussed. This paper compares the establishment of U.S. viticultural areas with the Italian approach, which was initially private and later developed within the framework of the Italian wine laws. The Italian approach more closely resembles a private arrangement supported by law instead of a cartel.

Wine as a research topic continues to address a plethora of diverse contexts. In consideration of this scope and abundance of wine literature, this study aims to provide guidance for future meaningful contributions to this existing body of wine knowledge through a comprehensive scholarly review.

A total of 22 wine business, hospitality and tourism journals were selected and used to identify 739 refereed articles addressing wine-related topics over a 26-year period from 1990 to 2015. This was segmented using five wine research time frames, which were then separately investigated using content analysis and keyword network analysis.

Results support the importance for continued refinement of certain research areas to add understanding to wine research. In particular, the topics of marketing and tourism pertaining to wine research have fragmented into much more specialized sub-segments over this 26-year period.

Limitations include generalizability of findings because of the study’s use of 22 journals, along with the selected 26-year period. Future research should examine other time periods using other publications in peripheral and in non-related areas to seek topics potentially and inadvertently overlooked by this process. Significant topics and trends regarding wine research were identified and classified according to time periods. Information has been provided for future directions and new research agendas.

Based upon an examination of time periods segmented by half-decades, keyword network analysis was used to explore wine research trends. Using keyword network analytics, this method for identifying networks between key words produced findings that have brought the literature regarding wine research to a current status allowing academics to gain insights into potential direction for future research needs.

The rearing of food animals by intensive factory methods has received a great deal of publicity in recent months. This has induced the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to set up a technical committee to examine the conditions in which livestock are raised and kept under systems of intensive husbandry, and to advise if standards should be set in the interests of their welfare. He announced this in Parliament on April 20 and hoped soon to name the chairman and other members of the committee. The committee will quickly note that most criticism has been directed at what many regard as inhumane methods, most of this coming from the heart rather than the head. Battery hens, fooled by changing periods of electric light, have increased their laying and since the broiler industry exploded into the food market only a few years ago, the small seasonal trade has become an all‐the‐year round trade of 100 million birds, a prodigious output that is still rising. This mass production of white meat had already made similar strides in the U.S.A. and a few continental countries a few years previously. Its commercial success, however, is undoubtedly due to the economics of the trade; that it is possible to sell poultry of relatively small size and uniform quality as cheap, or even cheaper, than butchers' meat. All this tends to encourage the application of the same intensive methods of production in the meat trade. Anything that can increase the amount of first‐class animal protein in a world rapidly growing short of it and at lower prices merits more than a sentimental appraisal.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the consumer use of geographical information in the wine purchase decision. Consumers often rely upon the place of origin of a wine product in order to assess its quality. This research examines the importance of place‐of‐origin information and what level of place is meaningful to consumers, as well as which consumers utilize that information.

Data collection took place by means of a highly structured online survey of 409 geographically dispersed wine consumers across the USA. Respondents were recruited by Survey Sampling International and screened for at least occasional wine consumption.

Brand and place‐of‐origin information such as region, country and state were the most important attributes in the consumers' choice of a wine. One type of geographical indicator, appellation, was not well utilized. Core wine consumers and those with greater expertise utilized place‐of‐origin cues to a greater extent than less frequent and less knowledgeable consumers.

The study sample represents US wine drinkers and should not be taken as a general population sample. Potential respondents were required to have consumed at least one bottle in the last year in order to take the survey. The non‐probability sample includes participants from 46 states, 189 of whom are male and 211 are female.

Wineries in established regions should increase their efforts to promote regional identity at the county, state and national level, to enhance their existing product images. Regional information is more heavily utilized by consumers than appellation information, which allows producers to take advantage of pre‐existing levels of awareness. This research suggests that marketers develop strategies to increase sales that emphasize larger regions such as county or state rather than appellations.

This paper is of value to academic readers, wine industry practitioners and regional trade and tourism associations and other commercial entities that market their products with regional cues. The geographically dispersed sample provides results that generalize well to the wine consuming public.

This study explores the impact of institutions, policies, and regulations at the global, national, and sectoral levels on digitalisation within the Italian and Australian wine industries.

Drawing on qualitative research data collected from interviews with key personnel in the wine industry, this study shows that both jurisdictions are at a similar stage of emergent digital development despite very different settings.

Accordingly, the authors find that digitalisation is constrained by common policy and regulatory issues emanating at the global and national levels, such as a lack of data infrastructure and data governance, and the need for institutions at the local and regional levels to spur innovation, especially with SMEs.

This is the first study to analyse the role of policy, regulation, and institutional arrangements in digital diffusion using a cross-country comparison of the wine sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore validity and reliability of a possible collaboration model for wine tourism with a “public” basis, i.e. from the point of view of the municipality engaged in promoting the wine tourism industry insisting on the territory.

The survey, proposing a theoretical/empirical framework, has investigated, through an electronic platform, the municipalities belonging to the National Association of “Wine Cities.”

The research has demonstrated a substantial trustworthiness of the model, with further evidence about the underestimation of stakeholder networks on behalf of Italian small municipalities. A clear difference of perception between non-small municipalities and small municipalities has emerged with regard to the perceived relevance of the collaboration with the territorial wine tourism players/stakeholders.

A recent legislation in Italy, just focused on small municipalities, might help overcome these gaps, between non-small municipalities and small municipalities, releasing in the territories new energies for the development of wine tourism, from both planning and financing points of view.

Italy as country is the largest producer of wine in the world. Similarly, wine tourism, as additional wine business opportunity, is a successful phenomenon in Italy, even though with great margins of development (especially with comparison to the New World of Wine). One of the main limits of this delay is the lack of public-private collaboration, at widespread level, among the players/stakeholders of the sector. The model that has been proposed in this research contributes scientifically and practically to fill this gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on high segments of the Italian olive oil and wine markets. The main goal is to compare the role and the effectiveness of the certification of origin in the creation of value in the two selected markets. Moreover, the authors investigate how different quality clues in the olive oil and wine sectors are related to prices.

To meet the goal the authors estimate two separate hedonic price models where the price of the product is regressed over different quality clues some of which are sector specific and some are common to the two sectors. The models are estimated on data which come from two of the major Italian guides chosen for their well established reputation and for the richness of information.

The results indicate that: product origin and the relative certification schemes play a relevant role in the formation of prices in both markets; while the olive oil price seems to be more sensitive to farm location than to the certification of origin, the opposite happens for the wines; the higher segments of the Italian olive oil market is increasingly sophisticated and follows the main tendencies established in the quality wine markets where many quality attributes are intensely active.

First, it should be kept in mind that results for higher market segment may not hold for different segments where relevant quality clues may be different. Second, reader should be aware that comparability of the two samples is constrained by limited data availability for the olive oil sector compared to the wine sector.

This study represents one of the first attempts to compare the role of the certification of origin in the creation of value in the Italian agro-food markets.

The paper aims to analyse the current situation and the perspectives of Italian wine in key Asian export markets – China, Japan, India, Singapore and South Korea. These countries show the highest growing rates in wine consumption and are forecasted to become increasingly more strategic for Italian wine producers.

A SWOT analysis is applied to the most recent set of secondary data available from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), the Italian National Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE), the International Organisation of Wine and Vine (OIV) and Euromonitor International reports.

The study reveals that the most interesting markets for Italian wines are China and South Korea. The key strengths are mainly related to high quality products, evoking classic values and being perceived as a status symbol, while the main concerns for Italian wines are mainly related to promotion and distribution issues.

The SWOT analysis can be used to develop a strategy that takes into consideration the potential strengths and opportunities and the impact of weaknesses and threats, but it cannot cover all the possible aspects Italian wineries must know about Asian markets. It offers a base for further and deeper thoughts about the how to succeed in the most dynamic and challenging markets of the next 20 years.

Differently from other studies, which tend to analyse Italian perspectives in Asian markets on a country‐by‐country basis, this work represents the most recent and comprehensive research on Italian wines in Asian markets.

The wine market in Italy has been through several changes in the last decade. Actors in the supply chain need to find new strategies or tools in order to remain competitive in what has become a fiercely competitive sector. Innovation is one of the tools which have been successfully used in the New World wine market, hence innovation might also be a useful resource for actors in the Old World wine market, such as in Italy. The purpose of this paper is to explore stakeholders’ perception of such innovation, including how its usefulness in the Italian wine production and distribution chain is perceived.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out in Emilia-Romagna with a wide range of actors in the Italian wine chain and consumer focus groups and the resulting data were analyzed using the content-summarizing approach.

These stakeholders agreed that innovation is needed for production and processing as well as in quality control, but only on condition that it should maintain the quality and value of traditional wines. Innovative wine products tend to be unacceptable to consumers. Most stakeholders associate innovation with communication as producers and distributors seek innovative ways to convey information regarding the value of wines to final consumers.

The findings are qualitative and based on a small group of Italian wine industry players and consumers who operate mainly in a domestic context.

The paper provides industrialists with information useful in the search to find the right strategies to make them more competitive in the Italian wine market. It is crucial to find and adopt innovative approaches toward communication throughout the chain. Information appealing to tradition and sentiment could be highly effective ways to reach the consumer.

This is the first in-depth study of the perceptions of all stakeholders (from producers to consumers) regarding innovation in the Italian wine chain; of particular importance as the industry is currently in transition toward globalization.

This study aims to investigate, by means of a balance sheet analysis, the equilibrium and capital, financial, economic and income dynamics of Italian wine producers, during and after the international economic crisis (2008-2017). Therefore, three research questions arise: What was the evolution of the main financial indicators and margins? Did the companies that survived the crisis increased their profitability? Have these companies changed their financial and economic balance sheets?

It was analyzed the balance sheets of a medium–large companies sample. The study describes the evolution of three income indices (return on equity compared to the average interest rate on government bonds, return on investment compared to the average rate on loans, return on sales), three asset margins (structural margin, net working capital and treasury margin) and four financial ratios (acid ratio, current ratio, leverage and index of financial dependence). The results were graphically represented, also with the use of interpolation curves.

After the crisis, the sector shows increasing profitability. However, from the balance sheet analysis and the trend of the financial indices, there is a strong imbalance and excessive levels of stocks. Furthermore, the debt situation is excessive: the predominant presence of third-party financing would require enormous recapitalizations and probably an increase in self-financing, which is possible thanks to the constantly growing profitability.

The study takes into consideration only the companies that survived the crisis, therefore, presumably the stronger ones. Moreover, more ratios should be considered to have a more complete picture. It is a uniquely quantitative study based exclusively on the balance sheets data that neglect other important economic factors.

Public policies could use this study for better intervention decisions in support of agricultural and agro-industrial activities. Credit policy above all should consider the results of this research, requesting urgent consideration of possible capitalization warranting the access to regulated financial markets. Besides, internal management may compare company outcomes with average sector outcomes to identify improvement prospects. These kinds of studies are advisable for education and training.

The careful economic and financial analysis of the sector favors the relaunching strategies of the Italian wineries in which many employees work. Supporting companies favors employment, constant incomes for workers’ families along the entire supply chain, from the production of grapes to consumption. A solid sector guarantees development and social and economic well-being.

The study contributes to the literature by providing a quantitative method of analysis of the sector, through the comparative information taken from the balance sheets. Therefore, it expands managerial and accounting knowledge on an important sector for the Italian and world economy.