Forecasting in the Wine Industry: An Exploratory Study

The wine industry is typical of many other horticultural industries in that it faces tremendous uncertainty, due to long lag phases between the initial planting, harvesting, bottling and sales, and seasonal variation between years. As a consequence, marketers face constant challenges when matching supply with demand. While much literature exists on forecasting, forecasting within the wine industry has not yet been documented. An exploratory study of 11 New Zealand wineries, using in‐depth semi‐structured personal interviews, was carried out to develop an understanding of the forecasting and planning processes followed by the wineries. Results were varied, at times confirming existing literature on forecasting and at times contradicting it. The results of this study suggest that wineries use more sophisticated short and long term forecasting methods. In addition, viticulturists become more involved in the forecasting process.