Breeding, consumers and market issues: main evolutions in the vine and wine industry

Abstract

The grape and wine industries currently face many challenges that affect wine markets and consumers. Present research has to meet expectations of vine growers regarding these challenges. However, because of the delay between laboratory work in genetics and the actual marketing of wines, it is very difficult to predict their economic impact. Thus, it is necessary to develop approaches that could help to consider their impacts in the near future. The present contribution describes the diversity of disciplines and topics involved in human and economic studies. It underlines the historical evolutions of the topics considered and their links with those of the French vine and wine industry since the middle of the 19th century. A retrospective analysis reports five main periods, during which different disciplines successively appeared and fostered particular topics linked with major issues: 1) the first period focused on the historical and economic conditions of the development of viticulture during the second half of the 19th century; 2) the second period covers the first half of the 20th century, marked by the overproduction crisis of 1907; 3) the third period encompasses several decades after World War II, characterized by many economic studies that addressed improvements in quality, the birth of marketing sciences and the decline of consumption; 4) the fourth period (starting in the 1980s) took advantage of the “New World countries” breakthrough, offering new models of management, marketing and strategic issues and methods, and rapidly extended to the whole world; 5) the fifth period is the current one. Globalization of markets, changes in world wine governance and new research networks have led the wine sector to take into account new topics, such as business strategies, marketing mix and export policies. Post-normal and participative sciences present a strong interest to analyze the concept of sustainability and its development.