The competitiveness of Romagna wineries. An exploratory analysis of the impact of different strategic approaches on business performance

From Firenze University Press Journal: Wine Economics and Policy

Lorenzo Bandieri
Department of agro-food sciences and technologies, University of Bologna

Alessandra Castellini
Department of agro-food sciences and technologies, University of Bologna

This study focuses on the wine industry, which is a very important and strategic agro-industrial sector worldwide. In the global market, the principal players considering both production and export are three EU nations, i.e. Italy, France, and Spain, which are responsible for about 50% of the total world wine production in 2019 [24]. In particular, the Italian wine sector is mainly com-posed of small and medium enterprises, as the average cultivated surface per winery is 2.1 hectares, although it records a high level of profitability and competitiveness, as the annual revenue of the sector is equal to 13.4 bn € in 2019 [15]. Moreover, the value of Italian wine exports has rock-eted in the last ten years [24]. It has been calculated that the percentage weight of wine exports on the total nation-al agri-food export is close to 15% [14]. It is also worth noting that the attitude towards wine export in volume is equal to 45.4% for Italy in 2019 [15]. In this context, the Emilia-Romagna region plays an important role, as it con-tributes to 5.74% of the Italian export value in 2022 and it is the first region in Italy in terms of consumption [44]. In addition, Emilia-Romagna owns certified wines that are well-known in the international scenario [45]. Some of them, such as Albana, are prerogative of the Romagna territory (the southeast area of the region). This study aims to examine and explore the competi-tiveness and strategic orientations of wineries located in Romagna. Specifically, the goal is to analyse the impact that business strategies and resources and capabilities could have on the creation of a competitive advantage in the market, which is expressed by a better performance of the Consorzio Vini di Romagna wineries. To survey the criti-cal factors for Romagna wineries in achieving their com-petitive advantage, this study adopts a double approach, derived from two different strategic theories: the Theory of Competitive Advantage [28, 29] and the Resource-based Theory [2]. These two strategic theories can be applied together because they analyse the competitiveness of firms from complementary points of view. Therefore, a double approach has been adopted, following the positive results already presented in the literature [10, 36, 38].In detail, the authors investigate if wineries that fol-low one of Porter’s competitive strategies will obtain a better performance in the market concerning their com-petitors or if some resources and capabilities owned by firms are positively related to their performance. Hence, a set of four hypotheses to be verified has been proposed. The study is structured as follows: the next chap-ter focuses on the theoretical aspects of strategic theo-ries and their practical applications in the wine sector. In paragraph 3, materials and methods used to conduct the analysis are presented, together with the hypotheses set. The following section reports the results of the study, while paragraph 5 presents the discussion of the results obtained. Finally, the last section shows the conclusions reached, together with managerial implications, limita-tions and future research directions.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/wep-12025

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