22 August 2017
France boasts thousands of years of wine making and some of the finest wines in the world, but French and Chinese students come to Adelaide to learn about wine and spirits marketing.
This is the seventh year that KEDGE Business School in Bordeaux, France, has brought students from its Global MBA program to Adelaide to learn from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at UniSA, and visit South Australia’s famous wine regions.
KEDGE Business School’s Professor Herve Remaud, says Bordeaux in France makes almost as much wine as all of Australia “We have to learn modern marketing techniques in order to sustain a vibrant wine and tourist industry, which is why we come to Australia. Because of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s knowledge of brands and consumer behaviour, our group learned things that we cannot access elsewhere.”
Students also had the opportunity to travel through the Adelaide Hills to visit wineries and critically review the challenges wine brands face in order to grow sales and brand reputation.
Among the students was Lucas Leclerc, technical director and winemaker at Chateau Lafon Rochet, a Bordeaux classed growth founded in the 17th Century. “Wine marketing is nothing if we don’t see it on the spot. Visiting all the wineries, we have understood how difficult or easy it is to implement a good marketing strategy.”
Reinforcing UniSA’s practical approach to learning, the students are divided into teams and are given 1 of 4 wineries to work with. Over the week, they analyse the companies’ websites and available material, and on the Friday we visit each of the 4. Each team presents their impression of the business form the available materials, then the winery marketing or business manager responds with what they are doing in marketing to the whole group.
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute is a long-term partner of KEDGE Business School’s Global MBA program, welcoming MBA students from its Bordeaux, Marseille and Shanghai campuses to UniSA since 2001.
