Risks and Opportunities of Italian wine Companies entering the Chinese market

Abstract

Wine is an alcoholic beverage typical of Western culture and one of the most representative products of Made in Italy abroad. Although its cradle is in the Old World countries (Europe mainly) it is slowly but inexorably joining the eating habits of countries with realities and cultures different and far from the western ones. At the same time, preferences and customs associated with wine consumption have changed, rather than satisfying purely gastronomic needs its function is enriched with experiential, symbolic and hedonistic elements (Crescimanno and Galati, 2014). China is part of those realities where traditionally, there is not such a deep wine culture as the one existing in the Old Continent. However, over the past three decades the enormous economic development, succeeded by the increase in Chinese consumer’s available income, and the growing Western lifestyle influence had led to an evaluable increase in wine consumption. China is having an extremely relevant development, already world’s second largest economy , within 2020 is going to become still wine’s first market. China wine market represent an important prospective for the Italian wine producers, and although numerous Italian wineries consider it a huge opportunity, however only a few are present on this market. Being aware of these notions I started an internship in a Tuscany winery. Poliziano is one of the most important realities for the Vino Nobile di Montepulciano; it is a family owned winery with an average production of 850 thousand bottles per year. It successfully exports in 49 countries, mainly in Europe and the United States but it has some difficulties on penetrating the Chinese market. My university background, my experiences in China, the internship at Poliziano and last but not least my passion for the Italian wine encouraged me to study in more depth the Chinese wine market, its characteristics, and finally try to draw a way for understanding and entering this market. This dis