Wine Industry - Porter's Five Forces

Bonny Doon Vineyards, a successful winery business based in Santa Cruz, California, has grown from selling 5,000 cases of wine a year in 1981 to 200,000 cases a year in 1999. To keep growing and be more profitable, the business must choose amongst three possible strategic directions. The first strategy is to start importing wines from Europe into the United States. The second alternative is branching into a retail outlet for unusual wines of great value, accompanied by a high level of service. Lastly, the business’ D.E.W.N could be expanded to include wines not made by the company itself but by other wineries that follow the same values and philosophy.

The structure of the wine industry is quite different around the world. The barrier to entry is relatively higher in the New World than in the Old World. Referring to the market data on the level of concentration in 1998, people can see a few players dominate the markets in Australia and the U.S. while the level of concentration is quite low in Europe. Therefore, the rivalry in Old World is intense there.

The premium wine segment is quite concentrated with high barriers to entry making mergers and acquisitions a strong and prevalent growth strategy. With industry analysts forecasting the demand for premium wine to grow at 8% to 10% per year, many former non-rivals are now becoming a threat. Jug wine producers are entering the premium market and beer and spirit producers

Wine production involves two parts of economic activity – viticulture and wine making in the winery. In the global context, wine production is dynamic due to the influence of globalization, technological advancements and extensive research. These have essentially influenced the nature, spatial patterns and the ecological dimensions of the wine industry.

The scope of the innovation expertise that New World wine producers have is value-chain wide in scope, and in-depth enough to completely re-order manufacturing, fermentation, distribution channel, pricing, marketing and customer service (Cholette, 2009). New World wine producers

The supply of grapes, apples, bulk wine and grape juice concentrate for Vincor’s wine products comes from a combination of sources. Privately owned vineyards (Canada, U.S., Australia) provide somewhere between 35% to 57% of the raw products needed to

Production and consumption of wine was mostly localized until the early 1990’s. Wine producers in different countries were traditionally isolated from each other, and most of the world’s wine drinkers consumed either local wines or imports from nearby producers. Winemakers had minimal cross-border interaction and followed local traditions.

The same concentration is happening in the “on-premises” buyers, where many large hotels and restaurants chains are purchasing wine centrally rather at locally, increasing their buyer power.

While bargaining power of buyers is ranked the least important of the five factors for Mondavi’s strategy, its importance should not be understated. One of the Wine is typically sold to wholesalers who then distribute to retail outlets. With the decreasing number of wholesalers and the consolidation of retailers, buyers negotiating power is increasing. It is difficult for companies like Mondavi to make consistent profits and maintain market share if they cannot keep products on retailers’ shelves.

Vincor International goal is to become one of the top five wine companies in the world in terms of earnings. In order to attain this goal they have implemented a corporate strategy that focuses on using their existing powerful position in market to help them developing sales, marketing, distribution capabilities on an international scale. The strategy also includes acquiring new wineries and wine brands in new emerging region in the wine market also called “New World regions”(Vincor, 2005) throughout the world.

Historically, the French had been the dominant competitor in the global wine industry due to the low effect of the five forces of competition. The main barriers to entry that kept the threat of competitors low for the French were incumbency advantages, unequal access to distribution channels and restrictive government policies. This first barrier, incumbency advantages, can be explained by the domestic French Wine Industry in the late 18th to mid 19th century that was already supporting 1.5 million families for both the growing of grapes and other wine-related businesses. France already had a domestic market for the growth and cultivation of vineyards that was able to provide French producers with a steady supply of agricultural inputs.

The wine industry in Ontario and BC is closely linked to the grape-growing sector and, as such, is directly affected by provincial agricultural policies. In Ontario, the vintners negotiate annually with the grape growers represented by their marketing board to establish grape prices. In BC, the grape market is not regulated and growers and wineries contract privately with each other.

1. How did the French become the dominant competitors in the increasingly global wine industry for centuries? What sources of competitive advantage were they able to develop to support their exports? Where were they vulnerable?

Bieler, Kristen Wolfe (2006), “Behind the [ yellow tail ]® Phenomenon: How It Happened and What’s Next?” Beverage Media Group, February, pdf download.

This case describes the global development of wine industry, and how new world wine players occupied the global market share from old world wine producer gradually. It is very interesting that author selected the Britain as the sample stage for the battle between the new world wine campaign and the traditional campaign.