Coopetition Strategies and Wine Tourism Offerings

Many wine producers supply tourism offerings as part of their business models (cellar door experiences, weddings, accommodation, etc.) to deliver value to their end-users.Nevertheless, these goods and services are often costly for under-resourced vineyards and wineries—meaning that there are important challenges associated with orchestrating assets for these enterprises. While certain entrepreneurs cooperate with their competitors (coopetition) to implement performance-enhancing wine tourism offerings, the intricacies of these business-to-business activities remain under-researched. Consequently, under the extended dimensions of resource-based theory, this study highlights how coopetition can be used to facilitate wine tourism offerings. Using conceptual insights, coopetition occurs in multiple capacities (informally and formally), which in turn, assists decision-makers to engage in performance-enhancing forms of wine tourism. Yet, there are potential dark-sides of coopetition, such as organizational tensions that emerge between rival businesses—which can influence the boundaries of these networks in a wine tourism setting. Collectively, this investigation strengthens the existing body of knowledge surrounding the management of wine tourism offerings through coopetition strategies.