Uncorking Success: My MBA Team Brings Marketing Insights to Leading Wine Industry Supplier

For many Americans, California means sunshine, Hollywood, beaches—and wine. Bucolic photos of grapes basking in the sunshine—ready to be picked—reinforce such impressions. So do social media posts that reference wine tastings held in spectacularly beautiful California settings.

However, the process of vine to wine is a complex endeavor. Deep expertise is needed to manage all the variables associated with growing grapes and producing high-quality wine. At scale, it also requires highly technical, specialized equipment.

UC Davis has long been known as a pioneering leader and innovator in viticulture and enology. You can travel to New Zealand or southern France and hear winemakers share how important expertise from UC Davis was in their success.

Given the strong linkages between UC Davis and the wine industry, a recent project by our UC Davis MBA student team—to assist a major equipment supplier to the wine and beverage industry—is worth toasting.

Customer Surveys and Marketing Strategy Review

Bucher Vaslin North America (BVNA) provides both top-quality equipment and technical expertise/solutions to a broad range of customers. It recently asked our UC Davis MBA team to review its marketing and branding activities and conduct customer surveys. Executives said BVNA wanted to better understand customers’ perceptions and the company’s positioning in the market compared to competitors.

“We also wanted an MBA team to bring fresh perspectives to our branding and marketing efforts.”

- Jean-Pierre (JP) Giovanni, BVNA Vice President and General Manager

This student project was part of the Integrated Management Project (IMP) capstone course that anchors the UC Davis MBA curriculum. This course provided us with the opportunity to work with BVNA to develop analyses and recommendations of critical importance to their business.

I served as the student team lead for this project, collaborating with fellow MBA students Anissa Pearl Ramos, Cody Caldwell, David Lu and Kathy Truong. Our faculty advisor, Kelly Wilson, provided valuable guidance throughout the process.

Our team tackled multiple topics in parallel. We sent surveys to current BVNA customers to assess their perspectives on both their past experiences with BVNA and their decision processes when purchasing equipment. In addition, we analyzed BVNA's product portfolio, comparing it with competitors.

We also attended an industry trade show to speak with winemakers and other market participants about their perception of BVNA. As MBA students, we have studied many markets and industries in our classes. But talking to customers directly - and collaborating with BVNA’s marketing team - brought many of our MBA experiences to life in a new way.

BVNA Appreciated Our Research, Analysis, and Recommended Options for Increasing Customer Engagement

At the conclusion of our 10-week project, our recommendations included suggested improvements to BVNA’s website that would boost the company’s online presence. We also shared our findings about social media preferences within the wine industry.

BVNA will use our findings to review and revise several aspects of its marketing activities.

“We were very pleased with the professionalism of the MBA team and the great value of the insights they shared with us; we are implementing many of their recommendation right away.”

- Jean-Pierre (JP) Giovanni, BVNA Vice President and General Manager

The experience we gained as students - working closely with company executives - will help all of us as our careers progress. And our recommendations will also help BVNA serve its customers better, leading to increased sales opportunities.

We say “Salud” to that!