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Abstract
This study evaluates a collaborative wine tourism marketing alliance (Wine Islands Project) consisting of small to medium sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) and wineries whose alliance forms part of the overall activities of a horizontally integrated wine network. An on-line questionnaire administered to Wine Islands Project partners in December 2006 asked respondents to rate importance and performance measures related to the potential outcomes of the Wine Islands Project. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) revealed that the partners perceived the majority of measures as important, but underperforming relative to their importance. A segmentation of the sample using business type revealed that wineries rated the performance of the measures more highly than other businesses in the sample. Segmentation by business life stage revealed businesses in Life Stage 2 (6–8 years) and Life Stage 4 (16 plus years) perceived most measures as highly performing and those businesses in Life Stage 1 (0–5 years) and Life Stage 3 (9–15 years) rated most measures as underperforming relative to their importance. Findings suggest that segmenting results by business type and life stage adds valuable insights into understanding variability of perceptions of the performance of this marketing alliance. This should allow alliance and network managers to focus efforts to improve underperforming areas and, more importantly, identify those benefits that may act as incentives for tourism businesses to participate in such cooperative activities. This paper adds to our understanding of wine tourism marketing alliance and network development, and contributes to the SMTE literature by its application of IPA to examine the benefits of participation in a collaborative marketing activity.