Purchasing Drivers of Professional Wine Buyers. The Role of Denominations of Origin in the Buynig Decision of Italian Upscale Restaurants

Attraverso un'ampia ricerca empirica condotta a livello italiano su un campione statistico di acquirenti professionali nel settore della ristorazione qualificata, è stato definito il posizionamento relativo di alcune delle principali denominazioni di origine di vini italiani cercando anche di identificare quali siano le determinanti del posizionamento di un brand territoriale. abstract: This paper investigate the perceived value of territorial wine brands (appellations) in the specialized retail channel (restaurants, wine shops), assuming that a wine appellation can behave as a brand and that professional wine buyers - one of the most understudied topics in wine business research - play a key role in the “fine wine” market in terms of both sales and brand building. On the basis of an extensive literature review about Country of Origin (COO) market strategies, was set a survey on the Italian market aimed to investigate (a) to which extent appellations are able to influence the choices of professional buyers and (b) which are the factors that determine the appreciation of an appellation and its positioning. Data were collected by desk research, focus groups and a structured telephone survey of a random sample of 160 Italian restaurants. In order to build appellations’ perceptual maps, data regarding six prime appellations have been processed by a two-step analysis using multidimensional scaling and discriminant analysis. Results show that territory reputation and wine perceived uniqueness are the two key factors in driving professional buyers’ preferences. This paper proposes a marketing approach to determine the relevance of appellations in driving wine buyers decision process and offers new insights into insufficiently studied areas of the wine purchasing process, such as the role professional buyers in the wine market.