Stakeholder networks and the marketing of place in Italian wine tourism

Wine tourism has attracted the attention of scholars; however it seems that the topic has been primarily researched by adopting a demand-side perspective in order to study the profile of travellers. As a result, the supply-side perspective remains quite under-researched. From the literature that addressed this topic, some have studied the networks and the strategic alliances developed in different wine routes (Brás, Costa, & Buhalis, 2010; Telfer, 2001). Although these studies have focused on organisational structures that have received particular attention in the tourism management and marketing literature, they have only emphasised some of the stakeholders who are involved in a wine route (i.e. the businesses working in the wine industry) and there are many more (for example, local and regional authorities, wine industry marketers, channel intermediaries, agro-tourism operators etc). Thus all the actors from the tourism industry have not been taken into account. In addition, the aforementioned studies did not pay attention to the factors that can facilitate or hinder the development of an effective wine tourism destination. Network success can be seen to hinge not just on producers and (for example, regional) funding arrangements, but is also reliant on the interplay of a wide range of parties who can be seen to often take up the role of network ‘blockers’ and ‘facilitators’ of activities (Hingley, Lindgreen & Beverland, 2010); and as such, network success is reliant on combination of the roles of stakeholders and notably influenced by channel leads. As a result, this research aims at studying three different Italian wine routes in order to assess what are the factors that influence the successful development of a wine route and of collaboration among stakeholders. By so doing this research will fill the gap highlighted by Getz (2000) who suggested the need for research to focus