The Chinese premium wine market after Bordeaux: opportunities for Port wine

Abstract

Purpose: this paper develops a market entry framework to evaluate performance of entrants in China's luxury wine market. The market entry framework contains seven propositions related to the areas of relationship management, price, product, distribution, promotion and marketing mix strategies according to entry order.

Design/methodology/approach: the methodology involved a synthesis of existing work about the Chinese wine market to develop the framework and the seven propositions together with an application of the framework to two luxury wines: Bordeaux, an already established luxury wine, and Port, a late mover into the Chinese market. The application to Bordeaux and Port was based on secondary data using diverse sources to triangulate the information.

Findings: we found the framework helped to organise scattered secondary data about the performance of Bordeaux in the Chinese market and identify potential opportunities for Port from the lessons learned from Bordeaux as well as understand current activities taken by Port.
Port may position as a dessert and gift wine given its sweetness and packaging characteristics. Port can also benefit from its connection with colonial Hong Kong and Macau since the 17th century. Current activities by the Port producers seem to be on the right direction.

Practical implications: the framework can be very useful for new wines intending to enter into the Chinese market or existing wine that have not achieved the expected success.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Martin Kunc: orcid.org/0000-0002-3411-4052

Catalogue record

Export record