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Upgrading in Marketing and branding:
Analysis of the markets to which Chilean firms have aimed to sell their products is
obviously important as it will have greatly affected their development as a company.
Consumption of wine in the world is changing. Old World countries, such as France,
have a declining consumption (Gwynne, 2008a and ODEPA, 2005), and also these
countries tend to import less wine and instead drink nationally produced wine. Although
France has the second largest consumption of wine, 55.2 litres per capita in 2005, it was
only the ninth largest importer of wines in 2003 (Olavarria et al, 2008). Furthermore,
some countries who traditionally did not consume vast quantities of wine are showing
increasing consumption patterns. In Norway, for example, the total consumption between
1989 and 2002 rose by 65% and total annual spending per inhabitant rose by 60%
(Sanchez, 2004). In the UK market growth per capita increased from 2.51 gallons in 1981
to 5.02 in 1999 (Arnold et al, 2002) and consumption is relatively ‘open’ (Gwynne,
2008b) in that they are prepared to consume an increasing range and variety of wines.
Table 4 shows the top 10 countries to whom Chile exported wine in 2007. One can see
that the UK constitutes the main country with exports of over US$230 million and at a
median price of 2.27 dollars per litre. Germany and China generate much more imports in
terms of liquid imported but their respective merits of $1.2 for Germany and $0.57 for
China makes them the importers of very much the cheaper wine. In contrast, the US and
Ireland at over $3.0 per litre have a much higher quality than the average. This gives the
background to the tremendous range of companies that Chilean wine can export to. In the
middle, as the key market, is the UK with high sales but at reduced prices for each unit
exported. Higher sales growth can be achieved for those exporting to the US and Irish