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The aim of this paper is to consider place as a value proposition, in the context of Resource-Advantage Theory, by analysing the concept of terroir, including its antecedents and consequences.

The authors conceptually analyse the role of place in marketing by contrasting terroir to three other approaches: “in the style of […]”; “made in […]” and Protected Designations of Origin. They explore the impact of terroir on a range of products, offering a series of terroir value propositions.

Versus other place links, terroir offers a more specific Resource-Advantage, operating at environmental, philosophical and commercial levels. It offers a unique form of value to both consumers (e.g. identity, authenticity, cultural rootedness) and producers (e.g. irreproducibility, potential legal protection).

Propositions address the antecedents and consequences of the terroir designation, the impact of consumer engagement, perceived authenticity and the added value offered to other regional goods. Additionally, how terroir may form a barrier to market entry, the relationship it has with the territorial brand, whether it offers greater product longevity and how it can be used as leverage for other related place-based brands and tourism are examined.

This is the first paper to address terroir as a marketing concept and to situate it within other forms of place marketing. It provides a definition, outlines the ways in which terroir creates value and provides a research agenda for future engagement with the concept.

Wineries today are faced with the prospect of having to include environmental sustainability into their practices but implementation can be hard, complicated or even undesired. This research aims to examine firm features, specifically winery size and foreign direct investment, as potential sources of variability regarding environmental sustainability attitudes and practices.

Questionnaires were administered via telephone interviews with 63 wineries in France. Production surface and wine activities in other countries were the independent variables examined as potentially predicting environmental sustainability attitudes and practices, leading to competitive positioning and perceived firm success.

The findings clearly show that bigger wineries are more likely to practice environmental sustainability, but they do not necessarily have more positive attitudes toward environmental sustainability. For winery managers, firm size and environmental sustainability practices interact because they are perceived to lead to competitive advantages such as augmented product quality and better innovations. Larger firms are also more sensitive to micro pressures emanating from customers, competitors and distributors regarding environmental sustainability. Finally, wineries engaging in foreign direct investments have more positive attitudes toward and engage in more environmental sustainability practices than firms that remain domestic.

Rather than comparing firms that are environmentally sustainable versus firms that are not, this research examined actual firm characteristics that may influence management’s propensity to engage in environmental sustainability practices. This research provides explanations for why there are augmented environmental sustainability practices by larger wineries and the sources of subjective norms encouraging larger wineries, versus smaller wineries, to practice environmental sustainability.

The study explores the relationship between the breadth of external pressures facing leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the entrepreneurial stance they adopt for their firm, that is, entrepreneurial orientation (EO).

Blending attention theory with EO literature, we argue that increasing breadth of external pressures will challenge leaders' attentions with implications for how they seek innovation, risk-taking and bold acts. We highlight an inflection point after which a negative relationship between the breadth of external pressure and EO will turn positive. We use data from a survey of 125 small-sized wineries in France to test this and capture a range of 15 external pressures on entrepreneurs.

The main tests and additional robustness tests provide support. It is the breadth of external pressures – as opposed to intensity of any one specific form of pressure – that plays a fundamental role in shaping leaders' adoption of EO in small enterprises over and above internal characteristics.

While the results may be context-dependent, they provide support for an attention-based view of entrepreneurial responses by leaders of SMEs under pressure.

SME leaders and entrepreneurs should be aware of how their attention is challenged by breadth of pressures from external sources, as this can influence the EO they adopt for their SME.

This nonlinear perspective on external pressures influencing the EO of small firms has not been taken in the EO literature to date, despite some recent work that considers only a small range of external pressures.

This paper aims to propose a personality-based approach to measure Millennial consumers’ wine evaluations. Past personality-based measures (brand personality, country personality and product personality) each presents their own issues when it comes to measuring wine perceptions, especially those of neophyte wine consumers. This paper proposes a new, holistic and tailored measure to gauge the personality dimensions Millennials perceive in wine.

Multiple studies were conducted in France. Items from former personality scales were combined and condensed. An exploratory factor analysis (n = 318) followed by a confirmatory factor analysis (n = 236) across wines from different regions were conducted. Predictive validity tests relating the dimensions of wine personality to key consumer outcomes were also conducted. Finally, face validity tests with real wines were conducted (n = 190).

The results suggest two dimensions of wine personality for Millennial consumers: a social and a philosophical dimension. The nine-trait structure is stable across origins and each dimension can be related to quality and value perceptions, attitudes and purchase intent. The findings suggest a new way for managers to gauge the way their wine offering is received by Millennial wine consumers.

The initial personality structure, uncovered across the multiple studies, suggests a parsimonious way to understand how an important wine segment, Millennials, perceives wines. The measure includes brand, product and origin perceptions and thus proposes a holistic way of understanding young consumers’ perception of wine personality.

This article aims to empirically test the terroir concept and tackles the issues of origin, typicity and legality. Whilst this has previously been examined at a theoretical level, the research uses a study of producer and consumer perceptions to examine the multidimensional nature of terroir and its relationship with authenticity.

A preliminary list of terroir items was aggregated from the literature and placed in an online questionnaire that was distributed to an industry sample and then to a consumer panel in France. Quality perceptions, anticipated satisfaction and purchase intent of terroir products were also included. Exploratory and confirmatory analyses were conducted, as were linear regressions between uncovered dimensions and the dependent variables.

The results show that the terroir concept comprises three dimensions that relate to authenticity: product, internalised and institutional authenticity. All three dimensions are positively correlated. Each of these dimensions can be related to satisfaction, quality perceptions and purchase intent, although the intensity and valence will depend on the relationship of the respondent to wine.

Prior to this research, there were no empirical results to support the multidimensional nature of terroir. As well, the distinct relationship between terroir and types of authenticity is defined.

The purpose of this article is to review the use of the word terroir by print media in France using a multi-method approach. The objective is to uncover whether and how the media frames terroir-marketed products as being qualitatively superior to non-terroir products.

Every issue of five print magazines in France was analyzed over the period of one year. All references to terroir were coded as well as all tasting notes with and without terroir references. > 6,500 tasting notes and 800 uses of terroir in wine and food-related text from > 3,800 pages in 30 issues were identified and analyzed.

The results show that although it is not a frequently used word, terroir in tasting notes leads to significantly higher scores and prices for wines than when terroir is not included in the note. A further analysis reveals that terroir is most often related to subjective experiences of taste.

Wine managers should often use the word terroir in their press releases and communication pieces. However, the dimension of terroir that brand managers put forward in their communication pieces will influence the way in which the media frame their product.

Prior to this research there were no empirical results regarding how the media uses terroir. This research contributes to the growing body of research that seeks to understand the value of terroir as a marketing attribute.

A recent stream of research has focused on typicality associations – those that bring origins and products together. Most of the research has focused on typical products but atypical products have received very little attention, even though they are more and more present on the market. As it has yet to be reviewed, the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic product cues and product evaluations is examined in this paper for typical and atypical origin products.

Wine was used as the stimulus, and consumer evaluations of typical and atypical wines were reviewed. Consumers were segmented based on their knowledge of the product category. French respondents (n = 370) participated in an online questionnaire regarding the product cues they found most important, depending on if the wine was from the New World or the Old World.

The results show that extrinsic cues are just as important as intrinsic cues in the evaluation of origin products, contrary to what prior research suggests. Furthermore, consumer knowledge moderates the evaluations of origin products; the results empirically confirms the theoretical country of origin – elaboration likelihood model (CoO-ELM) proposed by Bloemer et al. (2009) for atypical origin products, but show typical products are evaluated differently.

This is the first study that empirically tests the CoO-ELM and includes the added dimension of typicality. The results allow for a better understanding of consumer perceptions of origin products and their cues.

This article seeks to uncover if the definition of terroir is the same between the users (producers, vendors, high and low involvement consumers) of the term in the French wine industry. The objective is to uncover if the definition of terroir is homogenous between the user groups.

An online questionnaire was distributed to an industry sample and then to a consumer panel, and asked respondents to outline in their own words how they would define a terroir product. Lexical analyses using SATO software were conducted and uncovered word frequency, distances, and contexts.

The results show that each user group has its own taxonomy of terroir terms and uses an exclusive vocabulary. User group distinctions and commonalities are outlined. Globally it appears that the user groups seem to define terroir based on their level of involvement with wine as well as their role in the wine industry.

French wine marketers can use these results to better understand how types of consumers perceive terroir and consider these perceptions when contemplating using terroir in a product description such as on wine labels or when developing marketing communications.

Prior to this research there were no empirical results regarding how terroir is defined in the marketplace as well as the relationships between the descriptives used to define terroir. This research is a first step in understanding the value of terroir as a marketing attribute as well as the signals it represents for all user groups in the French wine industry.

This paper aims to address the generalizability of the services personality concept and to propose a way of operationalizing personality across service contexts, not just retail/services brands. Interpersonal services seem especially relevant for analyzing using the personality concept because of the importance of human interaction within these contexts and because personality itself is socially molded. The personality‐based image perception can thus be useful in establishing branding strategies.

An empirical study using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis provides analytical results based on a sample of over 600 respondents' personality perceptions across three different services categories. A multi‐group SEM approach then tests the resulting measurement theory and examines its generalizability across three different interpersonal service contexts.

The results suggest that the services personality scale: displays strong construct validity; meets criteria for metric invariance across multiple contexts; offers a more complete explanation of service expectations relative to alternative measures; and potentially offers a dynamic explanation of consumers' expectations of the services brand.

Managerially, the services personality measure provides a tool for services retailers potentially useful in evaluating their respective service environments and thereby better understanding their relative market positioning. The approach may prove useful for perceptual mapping and competitive analysis.

Distinct from the current research that very often concentrates on a single service type using attribute‐based evaluations, this research validates the use of a personality‐based services approach across multiple interpersonal services contexts. Four services personality dimensions are validated which display good generalizability across contexts and good predictive validity as well.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what motivates consumers, in particular consumers of local food products or locavores, to purchase in local retail channels vs traditional supermarkets. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action, and reviewing the literature on traceability, social relationships, involvement, values, motivation, and distribution channels, the authors propose a model explaining the antecedents and consequences of local food consumption for both locavores and traditional supermarket consumers.

Face to face interviews were conducted in supermarket and farmers market contexts in a mid-sized city in France. A structural equation modelling was used to explain the relationship between the examined variables.

The results suggest that consumers in traditional food distribution channels are not very involved with local food products. Alternatively, this research shows that for locavores, traceability and social links are positively related to involvement with local food products, which lowers price perceptions and positively influences utilitarian shopping value.

The research provides a first empirical and academic perspective on local food consumption within different food retail channels in Europe. Much of the recent results on locavores and their behaviours have been conducted in North America and/or have remained rather conceptual.