Place-based marketing and regional branding strategy perspectives in the California wine industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore different levels of place-based marketing in the form of region of origin strategies used by wineries in their branding efforts. The overall aim is to obtain insights into wine consumer dynamics such as product involvement level, consumption frequency and differences between segments on the basis of gender and age from a regional branding perspective. Design/methodology/approach – Data collection took place by means of a highly-structured online survey of wine consumers across the USA. The request to participate was directed to legal wine drinking age people of 21 years and older to 9,922 e-mail boxes that yielded a response rate of 5.7 percent, finally resulting in 570 usable surveys. Findings – Consumers used regional branding cues, information and images in their assessment and valuation of comparative wine labels. Almost without exception, the addition of regional information on a wine label increased consumer confidence in the quality of the product. Research limitations/implications – Any follow-on work to the study should also include a broader sampling of consumer types throughout the USA and comparisons made with the study to assess the validity of generalising the results here. Practical implications – Regional branding efforts should be targeted at high wine product involvement consumers rather than their low involvement counterparts, as high involvement consumers are likely to be more influenced by brand-based cues. Originality/value – The paper is of value to academic readers, wine industry practitioners and regional trade and tourism associations and other commercial entities that market their products with regional branding cues.

Johan Bruwer, Ray Johnson