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Wine marketing: A framework for consumer-centred planning

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Abstract

The 3000-year-old wine industry of Cyprus has reached a critical turning point and requires a substantial strategic reorientation. This article researches current practices, beliefs and attitudes of both wine producers and wine consumers in Cyprus to identify the factors that affect the industry. The research is primary data based, and makes extensive use of qualitative and quantitative methods. It includes in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups of local and Greek wine experts, an e-mail questionnaire survey of international experts, in-depth semi-structured consumer interviews and focus groups, and a consumer survey with 600 interviewees. The findings relate both to functional and production management aspects, as well as business and marketing ones. Regarding the former, cultivation varieties, production methods and know-how-related factors were found to be the most critical ones. In relation to marketing, focused targeting, differentiation, perception management-based branding and country-of-origin image development are presented as the clear strategic path. The findings are linked with an extensive literature review in order to reach prescriptive conclusions with immediate management implications. The article finally develops a preliminary framework for consumer-centred planning, specific to the wine industry of Cyprus, but – subject to testing – potentially adaptable to many other countries as well.

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Correspondence to Alkis Thrassou.

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3teaches international business and trade in the Graduate School of Business at Georgetown University, where he also served as the Chairman of the National Center for Export-Import Studies. He also holds an appointment as Chair of international marketing of the Birmingham Business School in the United Kingdom. Fluent in Spanish and German, he has held professorial appointments in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas. He serves on the Global Advisory Board of the American Marketing Association, the Global Council of the American Management Association, and on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Marketing Science. He is a member of the American Council on Germany. For his work in international business and trade policy, he has been awarded honorary degrees from the Universidad del Pacifico in Peru and the Universidad Pontificia Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic. He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the United Kingdom. He also served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration.

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Vrontis, D., Thrassou, A. & Czinkota, M. Wine marketing: A framework for consumer-centred planning. J Brand Manag 18, 245–263 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2010.39

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