http://www.diva-portal.org
Postprint
This is the accepted version of a paper presented at Association for Consumer Research Conference 2020, October 1-4, 2020, Paris, France.
Citation for the original published paper: Servadio, L., Östberg, J. (2020)
‘Operation Vin’: Uncorking the Swedish Wine Market
In: Association for Consumer Research Conference 2020, October 1-4, 2020, Paris, France
N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper.
Permanent link to this version:
1
‘Operation Vin’: Uncorking the Swedish Wine Market
Luigi Servadio, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden Jacob Ostberg, Stockholm University, Sweden
EXTENDED ABSTRACT
Swedish consumers have access to one of the world’s broadest assortments of wine through the state monopoly Systembolaget. What market dynamics led up to this focus on wine on a market where consumers’ preferences had traditionally been for hard liquor and beer? Answering this question will give us important insight about the potential role of governance units as agents of market change, which is a perspective that has hitherto been overlooked.
During market change, governance units play an important role in setting the degrees of freedom that various market actors – from producers to retailers, distributors, service providers and consumers – have. In the market formation literature drawing boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate marketplace behaviors is typically the role that the state plays (e.g., Humphreys 2010). This fairly passive and reactive role of the state is a reflection of a particular ideological political system. There are, however, ideological political systems wherein the state plays a more active role in shaping market dynamics (Askegaard & Östberg 2019).
By drawing on strategic action field (SAF) theory (Fligstein and McAdams 2011; 2012) our case foreshadows the state as an active agent in creating market change. Wine consumption in Sweden took off in 1957 when the Swedish state, via its retailer Systembolaget, set in motion an initiative that worked as an endogenous shock to the market. In order to reconstruct the history of the strategic operation we relied on historical data sources. We collected online and physical archival data such as magazine and newspaper articles and books as well as historical cultural artefacts, such as original pamphlets, ration books, and objects. We also collected market-oriented ethnographical data.
The Swedish state first disrupted the Swedish market for alcohol. Traditionally, consumption of alcohol in Sweden has been focused on hard liquor. To change this the state decided to strategically promote a new alcoholic drinking culture through the massive campaign “Operation Vin”. This can be seen as the origin of the mainstream consumption of wine in Sweden. The basic idea of Operation Vin was to promote a shock in the market to replace the current established market logic with a new one.
Second, the Swedish state attempted to frame wine as a viable alternative. In order to successfully facilitate such radical change, especially in a culturally laden area such as alcohol, “discursive framing that resonate with underlying cultural currents must take place” (Kjeldgaard et al., 2016, 53). Our empirical findings show how utilizing the culturally embedded connection between money and alcohol served as a tool to gain acceptance for this new practice.
Third, this gradually led the settlement of a new alcohol culture. Today, lots of different wines from around the world crowd the shelves of Systembolaget. For consumers lacking cultural immersion in the world of wine, choosing amongst the many different wines can be a daunting task. Many labels look similar, names are tricky and hard to pronounce and the taste can be difficult to understand and remember. In order to translate the seemingly complicated world of wine for the Swedish consumers Systembolaget took a number of initiatives.
2
The present study takes a SAF theory perspective (Fligstein & McAdams 2011) to discuss how markets may change as the result of strategic actions by governance. We thus contribute to a literature which conceptualize market change as the outcome of consumer collective action (e.g. Kjeldgaard et al. 2016; Laamanen & Skålén 2014). Extending these studies, we illustrate the paradoxical nature of governance units. Fligstein and McAdams contend that “ordinarily, then, governance units can be expected to serve as defenders of the status quo and are a generally conservative force during periods of conflict within the SAF” (emphasis added) (2011, 6). Previous studies echo this conservative nature of governance units in acting as opposing force to the challenger actors (Kjeldgaard et al. 2016) or even as a non-existent force in the field dynamics between incumbents and challengers (Pedeliento et al. 2020). Our case instead shows how Systembolaget before Operation Vin played the role of defender of the status quo. During and after Operation Vin the state played the role of promoter of change. Finally, studies building on strategic action field theory (Fligstein & McAdam 2012) typically show that exogenous shocks is the most frequent source of field-level changes (Pedeliento et al. 2020; Laamanen & Skålén 2014). In contrast, our case illustrates a situation where the field is changed by an endogenous shock operated by the governance unit, that typically defends the status quo.
REFERENCES
Askegaard, S., & Östberg, J. (eds.) (2019). Nordic Consumer Culture: State, Market and
Consumers. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fligstein, N., & McAdam, D. (2011). “Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields,”
Sociological Theory, 29(1), 1–26.
Fligstein, N. and McAdam, D. (2012), A Theory of Fields. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Humphreys, A. (2010). “Megamarketing: The creation of markets as a social process,”
Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 1–19.
Kjeldgaard, D., Askegaard, S., Rasmussen, J. Ø., & Østergaard, P. (2016). ”Consumers’ collective action in market system dynamics,” Marketing Theory, 17(1), 51–70. Laamanen, M., & Skålén, P. (2015). “Collective–conflictual value co-creation,” Marketing
Theory, 15(3), 381–400.
Pedeliento, G., Andreini, D., & Dalli, D. (2020). “From Mother’s Ruin to Ginaissance: Emergence, settlement and resettlement of the gin category,” Organization Studies,
