Capabilities and collaborative marketing practices among rival cluster-based wine producers

This study investigates how owner-managers of wine producers that participate in coopetition relationships (cooperation with competitors) can effectively implement collaborative marketing practices with their cluster-based rivals to facilitate regional sales as a specific place-related strategy. Data collection featured interviews with owner-managers of smaller-sized, independent, family-owned, wine producers in New Zealand, alongside secondary data. Contributions are offered first, by profiling firms via a 2 × 2matrix, regarding decision-makers’ capabilities associated with gaining either a high/low recognition of types of customers’ knowledge and purchase intentions, also, by exhibiting a high/low competitor orientation. Second, unique insights emerge concerning the capability to be strategically flexible in response to environmental conditions. Third, new evidence indicates that capabilities vary, but some are of a lower-order ‘threshold’ rather than higher-order ‘dynamic’ nature.