The entrepreneurial influence on winery market performance – a mediation perspective

This paper aims to take a disaggregated approach to investigate the relationships between single entrepreneurial orientation (EO) dimensions and firm performance in the wine industry, with the generally established positive relationship between aggregated EO dimensions and firm performance.

Literature review, field studies, pilot tests, survey and structural equation modelling were used to build hypotheses and to test these hypotheses.

Proactiveness was identified to be the predominant EO dimension that contributed most to winery market performance. Entrepreneurial opportunity perception, however, was found to positively mediate the risk taking–winery market performance relationship, while negatively mediating the competitive aggressiveness–winery market performance relationship. The authors found no innovativeness and autonomy winery market performance relationships.

First, as with much survey-based research, the study relied upon self-report measures and there was only a 12.4 per cent response rate. Second, we used Australian wine industry cross-sectional data in the research. Third, this research used conceptual measures of market performance including sales growth, market share growth, profitability and customer retention. Fourth, while the present research investigated the mediating effects of entrepreneurial opportunity perception to introduce new wine styles/services into national and/or international markets, additional research could explore the same questions in the context of some specific types of entrepreneurial opportunity perceptions.

The research adds evidence to the ongoing debate about whether there are five or three EO dimensions by examining five EO dimensions and their individual relationships with firm market performance. This research meets Miller’s (2011) call for research on the disaggregation of EO components, in particular, research contexts. This research contributes to the limited empirical research on entrepreneurial opportunity perception. This research also has important practical implications for practitioners and government.