Matchmakers in Wine Marketing Channels: The Case of French Wine Brokers

French wine brokers are independent matchmaker intermediaries. They help buyers and sellers of bulk wine to meet and transact. This paper aims to identify the determinants of the wine brokers' use. We use a transaction cost approach and we hypothesize that buyers and sellers use brokers because they may reduce costs associated with transactions on bulk wine. A database of contracts on bulk vins de table and vins de pays is used to estimate a logistic regression of the probability of "broker intervention." We show that if the sellers do not belong to a cooperative production structure and if the buyers do not belong to the productive sphere it increases the recourse to brokers. Also, the extent of the production area and the potential quality variance among wine growers and the size of the contract positively influence the use of brokers. [EconLit citations: L140, L220]. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.