Human Mobility as Determinant of Price Strategy in a Fragmented Sector: The Case of the Top-Quality Wine Sector

This work studies the relationship between the network spanned by human mobility among fi rms and the price strategy in the Italian market of top quality wines. Until the early 1980s, winemakers were mainly oriented towards a low-quality production of wine, since wine was considered a commodity good, and there were only a few top-quality wine producers. In 1986 a “methanol crisis” triggered a process of industry redefi nition, characterized by organizational search behaviors and knowledge diffusion. The knowledge was diffused from a limited number of existing high-quality winemakers. They played the role of knowledge tanks and of latent intangible resource repositories for the whole industry (March, 1994). The diffusion of knowledge and the consequent rejuvenation of the wine industry had the effect of radically redefi ning the setting.