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This paper aims to take a disaggregated approach to investigate the relationships between single entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions and firm performance in the wine industry, with the generally established positive relationship between aggregated EO dimensions and firm performance.

Literature review, field studies, pilot tests, survey and structural equation modelling were used to build hypotheses and to test these hypotheses.

Proactiveness was identified to be the predominant EO dimension that contributed most to winery market performance. Entrepreneurial opportunity perception, however, was found to positively mediate the risk taking–winery market performance relationship, while negatively mediating the competitive aggressiveness–winery market performance relationship. The authors found no innovativeness and autonomy winery market performance relationships.

First, as with much survey-based research, the study relied upon self-report measures and there was only a 12.4 per cent response rate. Second, we used Australian wine industry cross-sectional data in the research. Third, this research used conceptual measures of market performance including sales growth, market share growth, profitability and customer retention. Fourth, while the present research investigated the mediating effects of entrepreneurial opportunity perception to introduce new wine styles/services into national and/or international markets, additional research could explore the same questions in the context of some specific types of entrepreneurial opportunity perceptions.

The research adds evidence to the ongoing debate about whether there are five or three EO dimensions by examining five EO dimensions and their individual relationships with firm market performance. This research meets Miller’s (2011) call for research on the disaggregation of EO components, in particular, research contexts. This research contributes to the limited empirical research on entrepreneurial opportunity perception. This research also has important practical implications for practitioners and government.

The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of winery owners/managers concerning the impacts of Brexit on the Spanish wine sector and propose a theoretical framework based on the extant organisational resilience literature to facilitate an understanding of this concept. The framework facilitates understanding of this concept through the perspective of winery operators.

Attendance at a large Spanish wine fair in 2017 allowed for brief face-to-face interviews with owners and export managers of 156 predominantly micro and small Spanish wineries. The data were analysed through qualitative content analysis.

Despite the general sense of uncertainty and negative perceptions regarding the outcomes of Brexit, the interviews revealed various forms of resilient responses, including ongoing efforts seeking to broaden the scope for exports into new, niche markets alongside more traditional ones. These findings have important implications for businesses engaged in international business, particularly in the wine industry, where the potential challenges resulting from a major political decision can exacerbate existing issues of competition.

From a practical perspective, this study examines an emerging issue with potential consequences for international business. From a theoretical point of view, the proposed framework provides a baseline to illuminate the understanding of the links and stages following turbulence within organisations. Notably, the activation of responses emphasises the importance of developing a resilient organisational culture, as well as developing internal and enabling factors and bundles of resources that help create firm capabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of formal environmental management systems (EMSs) in wineries. It reports on the implementation of EMSs amongst New Zealand wineries and explores whether environmental, social, economic and marketing benefits can be gained through the implementation of one or more EMSs.

Wineries which had implemented the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) programme were surveyed in order to evaluate their environmental performance and the benefits they received from implementing the SWNZ programme and any additional EMSs.

This study found that New Zealand wineries experienced improved environmental performance when implementing an EMS but disappointingly achieved few social, economic or marketing benefits. Further, almost half of the SWNZ programme wineries surveyed had also implemented additional EMSs, suggesting that wineries find the SWNZ programme is not sufficiently effective in meeting their environmental needs. Supporting this, the findings suggest that wineries with multiple EMSs have better environmental performance than those with a single EMS.

This paper suggests that NZ winegrowers need to make some improvements or additions to their SWNZ programme in order for it to more fully deliver benefits for wineries and reduce the need for implementation of additional EMSs.

This paper is the first to examine the environmental, social, economic and marketing benefits arising from implementation of one or more EMSs in wineries.

One of the main difficulties for wine managers is understanding and interpreting how some strategies and company behaviours could affect firms’ performance. This study aims to contribute to improve these concerns by examining the evolution of the competitive wine industry structure over time using the strategic group membership dynamics approach.

This study empirically analyses a data set spanning the period 2004–2014 to identify the strategic groups in the Spanish wine industry and to model their evolution over time. A time inhomogeneous hidden Markov model (HMM) is used for this purpose.

Three strategic groups are identified: Young Makers, Quality Lovers and Major Players. Young Makers are small wineries that produce low-quality wines. They are not part of a collective brand – Protected Designation of Origin – and do not invest in marketing campaigns. Quality Lovers produce the highest quality wines but offer a narrow assortment. They invest modestly in advertising, and most of them belong to a Protected Designation of Origin. Major Players produce medium-quality wines, offer a wide assortment and invest heavily in advertising. The groups seem stable over time.

The results show that strategic group analysis can be used to identify and compare patterns of strategic activity within the wine industry, providing a better understanding of the competitive environment.

No previous studies have analysed the competitive structure of the Spanish wine industry. This study delineates the structure of this industry using strategic groups, which is supported by a valid econometric model. Therefore, from a theory base perspective, this study adds new evidence to the stream of research on strategic groups by investigating their evolution over time in the wine industry and the effect of strategic group membership on performance.

The purpose of the research reported here was to discover what marketing approaches small wineries employ and to what degree they could be attributed to their success. The article describes how the particular issue of measuring ‘success’ and what constituted ‘marketing’ was tackled and reports on the use of this in the subsequent empirical work. Five exploratory hypotheses were derived relating to the way in which ‘success’ could be measured and the contributory factors leading to the use of marketing. For small businesses that are classified at one of three levels of success the article reports what marketing activities were conducted. Data was gathered by personal interview from small wineries in the three main wine producing states and five main regions within these. The study found that: small winery operators are able to very consistently rate themselves and each other on success. Broadly, there were three factors that were used by them to gauge success: (i) wine quality and respect for this by peers, (ii) lifestyle, and (iii) business performance. Wineries at a particular level of success tend to use similar marketing activities and these differ somewhat from level to level. Those at higher levels of success are able to more comprehensively define ‘marketing’ and their customers and engage in marketing activities in a more discriminating way.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the degree of market orientation of a sample of Chilean wine producers; to compare two different instruments for assessing market orientation in this context; and to comment on the possible cultural sensitivities of these two measurement instruments developed from a North American context but applied in culturally dissimilar contexts.

In total, 69 CEO and Marketing Managers, representing approximately one quarter of the total number of wineries in Chile, completed a face‐to‐face survey questionnaire that utilized both the Narver and Slater MKTOR and the Kohli and Jaworski MARKOR market orientation scales. SmartPLS was used to carry out the measurement and structural analysis.

Results reveal that more than half of surveyed Chilean wine producers are market oriented, with 65 per cent congruence between the two scales. Cluster analysis also reveals three distinct segments and sets of characteristics that distinguish market oriented from non‐market oriented wineries. MKTOR and MARKOR scales show similar level of predictive power when using subjective or perceptual measures of performance as dependent variables. However, the MARKOR scale is found to be better in explaining changes in the dependent variable when the latter is measured by actual sales and gross margins (objective performance). National cultural dimensions (power distance and uncertainty avoidance) have an impact within organizations in the implementation of a market‐oriented strategy in a consistent and coordinated manner.

The MARKOR scale appears to have superior predictive validity and to be more practical for measuring market orientation since it explains the change in dependent variables to greater degree when performance is measured with objective as opposed to the perceptual measures.

Chilean winery managers should devote significant attention to market sensing activities and competitive intelligence gathering. The competitive and national cultural environment plays an important role in moderating the relationship between market orientation and a firm's business performance. They may also wish to consider becoming involved in various trade organisations, as well as collaborative partnerships with academic institutions, to enhance their competitive intelligence and technological competences.

This paper is the first to illustrate the market orientation of Chilean wine producers, and one of only a few to discuss the impact of national cultural values on market orientation.

This paper seeks to investigate the conceptualisation and measurement of the service quality construct and its relationship to behavioural intention through an application of the importance‐performance technique within the Australian wine tourism industry. Many winery operators invite customers to their winery and the quality of service during the visit can impact on future wine sales. Research undertaken among a sample of visitors to Australian vineyards showed that service process factors were more closely linked to wine purchase than tangible elements. The study also provides further support for the use of importance‐performance models of service quality, as this measure was found to be significantly related to two dimensions of behavioural intention.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it identifies distinct organizational models in a sample of small and medium enterprises operating in the Sicilian wine industry; and second, it identifies the key factors enabling a superior export success.

Internal resources were analyzed theoretically in order to achieve the aims of the study. Subsequently the empirical investigation was carried out administering a questionnaire to a sample of 102 wineries in Sicily, Italy. A cluster analysis was performed in order to group these firms into homogeneous categories.

The findings show that success in the international market is more common among wineries characterized by a larger physical and economic size, a longer experience in the international market, managed by entrepreneurs-owners who are highly educated and proficient in foreign language, and implement voluntary certifications.

The results need to be interpreted within the context of the study’s research design; more specifically, the reader should take into account that the study focuses exclusively on one industry and on one region (wine in Sicily).

The findings offer a valid support for managers who could use this results to better focus their effort and choose the most appropriate strategy in order to improve their performance in foreign markets.

Very few empirical studies have been carried out on the impact that internal and in particular organizational resources have on the firms’ organizational models operating in the wine industry.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and compare the efficiency of wine making in Germany and Ukraine in order to find the controllable factors of wine business performance using benchmarking tools.

The models of data envelopment analysis and other benchmarking tools are used to analyse the efficiency of wineries in two countries. Returns to scale, scale efficiency, super-efficiency and some other indicators are examined. The research is based on the sample of 36 German and Ukrainian wineries.

The hypothesis of higher wine making relative efficiency in Germany was compared with Ukrainian wine making, then analytically and statistically verified. A relatively high average scale efficiency score indicates good potential (above 30 per cent) for efficiency growth, due to the optimisation of a scale of production and sales. Generally, wine making in Germany and Ukraine has increasing returns to scale. The high-efficient wine business cannot bring great losses. It was found that the most efficient combinations of size and legal form of business organisation for wine business are presented in Germany.

The research is limited by a single industry of only the two countries.

This study provides useful information for researchers, investors and policy makers, enabling them to understand the current state, basic problems, controllable factors and efficiency levels of wine making in Germany and Ukraine. It may be useful to wine producers in these countries for improving their business performance.

This is the first paper that compares wine business performance and discloses its factors for Germany and Ukraine.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of wine tourism on the economic, social and environmental performance, i.e. the sustainable performance, of Spanish wineries. In addition, age, size and membership in the protected designation of origin are introduced as control variables to increase the precision of the cause-effect relationships analyzed.

A conceptual model is proposed, which is tested by means of structural equation modeling based on data from a survey of 202 Spanish wineries.

The results indicate the existence of a positive and significant link between wine tourism activities and the three performance typologies analyzed in the Spanish wine context.

The study contributes to the academic literature on wine tourism in a remarkable way, as, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no previous literature that has addressed the effect of wine tourism on the sustainable performance of Spanish wineries, making the study useful for both academics and wine professionals who are considering the implementation or development of this typology of tourism in their facilities.