Call for papers: "Wine Businesses"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

The wine market is experiencing rapid growth worldwide. For this special issue we are interested in research works investigating the case of firms in the wine industry. In the current context, being a good wine grower is not sufficient to succeed. Wine producers also need to be good wine sellers and wine exporters. This is a major challenge for wine producers. Moreover, the wine industry is characterised by long cycles, heavy investments, high storage costs and the uncertainty of climate factors. Thus, to face up to these difficulties, which strategy should be chosen? Traditional or industrial production?

The second point that we would like to address concerns the family characteristic of wine businesses. We are interested in how these family firms function, how they can adapt to the rapid growth of the wine industry, and whether this business model functions better than that of cooperative or multinational firms.

Thirdly, we would also like to explore the role of innovation in the wine industry: innovation in the production process, in the marketing process, in the packing process or in the brand process. How can wine businesses use the new technologies to develop their production and sales?

Finally, to succeed, do wine businesses need to cooperate and work together? What are the coopetition strategies that exist in the wine industry? How do these strategies impact on the financial performance of wine businesses?

We welcome all research articles that are related to the purposes presented above. However, we are not limited to these issues. All questions dealing with wine businesses, financial issues, organisation and innovation in the context of the wine industry will also be considered.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Governance
• Innovation
• Investment strategy
• Marketing
• Strategies of small wine firms, major international groups and brands
• Wines of the New World (see, for example, Dana & Winstone (2008))
• Coopetition (see, for example, Dana & Granata (2013) and Dana, Granata, Lasch & Carnaby (2013))

References:

Léo-Paul Dana and Julien Granata, “Evolution de la coopétition dans un cluster : le cas de Waipara dans le secteur du vin,” Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship 26 (4), 2013, pp. 429-442.

Léo-Paul Dana, Julien Granata, Frank Lasch, and Alan Carnaby, “The Evolution of Co-opetition in the Waipara Wine Cluster of New Zealand,” Wine Economics and Policy, Vol. 2, June, 2013, pp. 42-49.

Leo Paul Dana and Kate E. Winstone, “New World Wine Cluster Formation: Operation, Evolution & Impact in New Zealand,” International Journal of Food Science and Technology 43 (12), December 2008, pp. 2177–2190.

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 5 July, 2015
Notification to authors: 30 September, 2015
Final versions due: 15 December, 2015