Written by Cory Chandler
This may be a hard truth for budding vintners to swallow, but when it comes to the
survival of a brand, quality winemaking may be less important than savvy marketing.
In fact, winemakers with limited resources may be better off spending their money
on marketing than purchasing higher quality grapes, according to a brand mortality
study conducted by researchers at the Texas Wine Marketing Research Institute and
Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University.
The 15-year study tracked the fates of 25 Texas wineries beginning in 1991, when nearly
1,000 Texas wine enthusiasts rated the quality and name recognition of each brand.
When researchers revisited those wineries in 2006, they found an unmistakable trend:
the better the recognition rating a wine brand received, the more likely it was to
survive. No such link existed between quality evaluations and a brand’s success.
Their conclusion: high brand awareness is more likely to lead to brand survival than
a high perception of wine quality.
“Quality doesn’t necessarily determine survival of a wine,” said Natalia Kolyesnikova,
an assistant professor with the institute and one of the study’s authors. “The quality
may be excellent, but a wine brand will die without recognition.”
The study was named the 2008 outstanding paper in the
International Journal of Wine Business Research.
View a copy of the report (the study begins on page 13).
