XXIV Conference of the European Association of Wine Economists

The structural changes affecting the European wine sector impose new challenges to the wine industry re-garding the optimal strategies to be implemented to gain and maintain market share. This change is driven by manifold developments, among them the emergence of new production and consumption countries, which shifts global balances between the old and new word of wine. For producers in traditional wine-producing areas, this effect engenders the intensification of competition from non-European countries. The progressive dynamics of international wine trade over the last decade and in-creasing globalization call for improved trade policies, the promotion of regional brands and sophisticated tools to manage global supply chains. On the demand side, new consumption countries start to adopt wine in their beverage repertoire causing the wine category to gain popularity also among mainstream consumers. Increas-ing attention to food safety and quality attributes is ob-served as wine becomes a default choice. Consumers appear oriented to a broadly oriented concept of quality. The change of consumer patterns, the simplification of the European IG denomination system, increasing atten-tion of environmental and climate change issues lead the wine industry to adapt strategies to contain produc-tion costs, differentiate quality and commercial channels and satisfy all segments of the market. For this confer-ence contributions about adaptation of environmental, economic and communication strategies as well as wine consumer research are particularly welcome.