Case Study: The Spanish Wine Industry

This scholarly article assesses the elements of competitive advantage in the Spanish wine industry. Strategy, resources, capability, and managerial ability all affect a firm's competitive advantage.

Theoretical framework

One of the objectives of this study is to demonstrate that the competitive advantage of the company is explained through two synergistic and compatible issues: the situation in the environment of the company and its internal characteristics.

Authors have found literature where the wine sector has been studied from the point of view of two different approaches: strategy and resources and capabilities. But they have been studied separately in the wine sector. So the main contribution of this paper is to study the effect on performance of the two approaches but applied together. In terms of strategy, research has been found about the marketing strategy and performance in the French wine sector; in the USA wine industry, the studies are centered on the relation between differentiation strategies and performance. And in Spain, on the strategies, environmental variables, and economic performance and the explanatory factors of performance in the wineries from Castilla-La Mancha. With respect to the RBV and its link with better business performance, in the wine sector, authors have found works focused on the internationalization capacity in the Italian wine sector; on the link between intangible efforts and performance in the French wine industry); in the Brazilian wine industry research is focused on cluster resources and performance; and in the USA wine sector on business performance and knowledge.

In this section, the theoretical framework for the study is presented. Firstly, Porter's frame and secondly, the resource and capabilities theory, are revised as a proposal for the study of the strategy.