THINK GLOBAL, ACT LOCAL: RETHINKING MARKETING STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE ITALIAN AND MARCHES REGION WINE SECTOR. SOME EVIDENCES FROM A CONSUMER SCIENCE APPROACH

In recent years, profound structural changes are underway in the global wine context. Traditional producer and consumer countries in Europe such as Italy, France and Spain, have to inevitably compete with the markets of the New World. If on one side, this scenario implies a change in the competitive regime, on the other it provides the opportunity to intercept potential new consumers. This turnaround also involves consumers' habits: United States, for example, has become the main country in wine consumption with a positive growing trend, unlike France and Italy that are suffering a decrease in the domestic consumption. At regional level and in the Marches Region in particular, there is, therefore, an emerging need for fixing mid-long-term strategies able to approach the small companies to international consumers, without substantially changing their local nature. The three case studies included in this thesis, provide new points of view to rethink the role of consumers in the Italian and Marches Region wine marketing strategies, answering the research questions dictated by the current international economic and social context that decisively affect the wine world. The first research question, that this work tries to answer, concerns the most appropriate tools to communicate quality and identity of the wine in the globalized world. Sensory analysis provides a scientific base that can raise the effectiveness of consortium strategies. In fact, the first case study, shows how the Istituto Marchigiano di Tutela Vini (IMT) and Vini Piceni consortium, use a scientific study in sensory analysis in order to be able to communicate clearly the distinctive characteristics of the designations of origin of wine. In addition, the shared sensory vocabulary rewritten in a more simple way, reduces problems connected to cultural and social misunderstanding. The second research question concerns the information gap between producers and consumers. Can it be reduced through targeted research to understand the meaning attributed to different concepts and words? It often happens that, who produces and then communicates the wine is too distant from those who consume it. In the second case study, to identify the information asymmetry in the wine industry it was used the Social Representation Theory, a research method widely used in social psychology but little applied in the wine positioning strategy. This theory explains how cultural, social and economic context in which we live, can influence the actions and the way of thinking. In the case of sustainable wine, if the producers do not approach to their consumers, they risk to develop an ineffective marketing strategy or even misleading. The results of the research highlighted the similarities between producers and consumers on issues concerning the environment but at the same time showed a limited attitude of interviewed producers towards social sensitivity, respect for workers and the lack of concern for the price; issues that instead pertains to consumers who took part in the research. Finally, the last case study answers the question of research related to the role of emotions and their influence in buying decisions. Neuroscience techniques were used to determine the emotional responses with greater precision and without influence of unconscious components. In particular, a small group of consumers evaluated four white wines homologous in price and vintage. The first three are designation of origin wines produced in the Marches Region, while the fourth is produced in the Veneto Region. The research protocol was structured on the basis of the expectation test technique, that involves three phases (“blind”, in which participants taste wine but do not know the provenance, “expected,” in which they express their expectations based only on reading the bottle label, and “labelled,” in which they taste the wine and can read the bottle label). In traditional expectation testing, data is gathered through questionnaires compiled by the consumers. Instead, our study took electroencephalogram measurements in order to identify and analyse their emotional responses. The results highlighted the variance of emotions during the three phases of the expectation test, and identified the strength and weakness of emotions evoked by the different wines. The case study provided useful information about decision-making process, and thus also the purchasing process, to define with greater precision the strategies of marketing positioning and brand awareness. In conclusion, the results of this research offer new interesting implications for the entrepreneurial context, and in the same way, the multidisciplinary approach of this thesis, provides an original character contribution to applied research in the field of wine marketing.