Abstract:
This paper reports on an exploration of positioning strategies used by New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc marketers. The purpose of the paper is to enrich previous work that identified three design-based brand positioning ‘postures’, which we termed Solution, Signature and Soul. We further investigate these positioning strategies by considering whether and how wine marketers articulate those positions based on technological and socio-cultural meanings. We do so by applying narrative analysis to a purposive sample of NZ Sauvignon Blanc wine bottle labels. We interpret labels as texts, applying narrative analysis to confirm or disconfirm our interpretation of positioning postures, and to enrich our view of them. Our contribution is that in the wine market, the three postures may reflect the different brand strategies of three key players, namely retail brand marketers (Solution), ‘commercial’ brand marketers (Signature) and artisan brand marketers (Soul).