This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The cooperation and networking of enterprises is a global phenomenon and it concerns all kinds of enterprises independent of the size. The so called “Clusters” have been successful on a global level. Business Clusters are geographical concentrations of interconnected businesses and commissions (of institutional nature) that share common technologies and abilities. They are usually located in a restricted geographical region in order to facilitate the communication between the businesses, the transfer of merchandise and raw material and the creation of intra-personal relations (McDermott & P. McCormack 2005).The California Wine Cluster (Rolf A.E 2005) is an internationally recognised and long-living business network. Wine-tourism is an important resource of income when it comes to organized wine producing countries. Wine-tourism in Greece emerged and developed only during the last twenty years and it’s far from being a well-organized industry. The foundation of the “Wine producers’ Association of the Macedonian Vineyard” with the trade name “Wine Roads of Northern Greece” in November 1993 by 15 wine producers has played a decisive role in the introduction of Winetourism in Greece. Nowadays, 37 members of the Association suggest 41 wineries open to visitors in 8 routes. All there businesses are members of the Wine Roads of Northern Greece and have been evaluated according to specific qualitative criteria and are thus distinguished by a special seal of approval. One of the suggested routes is the “Wine Route of Naousa”. In March of 2012 an empirical research with questionnaires was carried out in order to record the cooperation between local wineries, the objectives of this cooperation and their contribution in the local development of a distant area. The study took place in the Municipality of Naoussa, a peripheral economy, where the 9 wineries operating consist the “Wine Route of Naousa”. The research was realized by the means of a structured questionnaire that was completed during personal interviews. The interviews were addressed to the 9 wineries that operate in the region. Conclusions can be extracted by the analysis of the answers concerning the volume and the kind of the cooperation, its duration and the contribution of the cooperation in the local Wine industry, the local community and the touristic businesses. Conclusions can also be drawn for the contribution of the “Wine Roads of Northern Greece” in local entrepreneurship.
The statements, opinions and data contained in the journal are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the publisher and the editor(s). We stay neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
