New leverages in customer/place oriented wine branding strategies. The case of wine architecture in experiential approaches to wine marketing

This paper aims at analyzing a recent trend in the wine industry approach to marketing and branding, represented by the use of wine architecture as one of the strategic leverages to provide the customer with a unique wine experience. Globalization hurries territories and producers to face the new competitive challenge and to catch the new dimension of the demand, which is experience-oriented more than productoriented. The paper explores the evolution of the wineries’ marketing strategies and the leverages they adopt, focusing on the emerging trend of wine experience through wine architecture. A conceptual model and two case studies are proposed regarding the use of the leverage of winery architecture, together with the wine landscape and the product (the wine) in order to achieve branding distinctiveness and to give the customer (winery visitor) a unique complete experience, made of product tasting, landscape enjoyment and innovative wine architecture appreciation. This research is based on the conceptualization of strategic marketing trends in the wine industry and on the development of the experiential marketing approach, which appears particularly promising for the wine industry and supports an holistic perspective to the wine experience, based on the elements of the territory, the product and the winery.

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