EVALUATION OF A MARKETING COURSE FOR EUROPEAN MICRO PRODUCERS OF WINE: MAIN CONCLUSIONS

The European wine industry faces increasing challenges from newer wine-producing parts of the world. One of its problems is marketing, particularly for small wine producers making good quality wine but lacking training in ways of publicising it and therefore selling as much as they would like.

The core objective of the European project “Marketing European Wine: training for micro producers”, coordinated by the University of Glasgow under the European LEONARDO DA VINCI Programme (development and innovation), is to assist such producers by giving them training in marketing that is tailored to the needs expressed by a sample of micro wine producers in less well-known or emerging wine areas in Europe. Specifically, the study focuses on the wine-producing regions in seven European Union countries: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.

To ascertain what marketing tools are most in demand from micro wine producers, the first step was to undertake a study of their marketing needs, comparing the resources available with the real priorities and difficulties faced by the wineries and wine-producing cooperatives.

Of all marketing tools developed in the project, we will focus on an online marketing course that was designed to fulfill the needs expressed by the producers surveyed. It is based on a marketing plan designed specifically for small wine producers by the University of Alicante with the collaboration and University Miguel Hernández of Elche (Spain). This course has been carried out and evaluated in Alicante. Main conclusions and results will be listed.