Use of knowledge-intensive services in the Chilean wine industry

Over the past two decades, Chile has successfully developed its wine industry, being the world’s fourth largest exporter in 2015 with mostly medium-quality wines. In addition to well known key factors such as climate and soil conditions, (foreign direct) investment in firms, imports of specialized capital equipment and highly skilled human resources, this paper explores the role of 38 (knowledge intensive) services in five different segments of the wine value chain. On the basis of answers by 29 wine firms regarding services activities on a survey carried out for this study, firms indicate they outsource about the same share (34%) as they carry out in-house (32%), while another 15% is produced using a combination of both. The degree of subcontracting of services falls as one moves further along the segments of the value chain. Moreover, it seems that small and large firms fully or partially outsource about half of all services, while medium size firms outsource less.