Answers to a Questionnaire' is a short story which was written by James Graham Ballard, and published for the first time in the English literary magazine 'Ambit', in 1985. Ballard's style of writing is highly important to understand his works, he is a member of the 'New Wave' in science fiction. His stories often represent and explore characters seemingly normal, but who are actually horrendous and violent sex maniacs. Ballard also considers the reader as an active part of the reading process in literature. This conception about the reader allows a new type of narrative patterns. As a brief introduction to this short story, we can say that it is a list of answers to a questionnaire of which the questions remain unknown to the reader. Over the 100 questions of this short story, the reader is allowed to find out what all of this is about, within the apparent chaos. It is obvious that a new narrative thread is being applied in this short story. The narrative thread set up by Ballard calls into question the way the text should interact with the reader. We will see what this narrative structure means to the reader.
[...] The aim is so to seduce consumers with every tool possible (labels, displays, shape of the bottles which is not always a preoccupation for the French. Moreover, consumer's tastes have changed and for most people, a wine made by a single grape variety is easier to drink. Thus, foreign wines (mainly those from Australia, Chili, Argentina ) have a real success, to the detriment of French wine. They simplified offers due to branding and simplicity on their labels, allowing everybody to have an access to the wine market. Even in France, the shelves and facings of foreign wines are progressively taking more and more space. [...]
[...] People are also takine more and more advantage of the practical tools such as the Internet and sales made by their e-commerce network are increasing every day. With its past, and with another vision of the consumer, French producers are going to come back. They have for them some undeniable assets reinforced by nice ideas and wine marketing specialists. As soon as the weaknesses and handicaps will be defeated, there is no doubt that France will become the leading wine industry in the world. Moreover France is probably the only country in the world able to satisfy all consumer' demands. [...]
[...] In fact, regarding the Bordeaux region, French wine offered is one of the most diversified in the world: more than any other. It is a region that offers a complete variety of products which can be positioned on along many product ranges (from basic to premium wines) and so, that can also be intended for all social categories. This kind of marketing is, of course, inefficient for the French Classified Growth which benefit of an international image. It does however work for wine organizations suffering from international competitors. [...]
[...] The networks developed all over the world (for instance NICOLAS) are functioning and with some producers' effort, there is no reason for these networks not to come to life Furthermore, the quality and the research in the wine sectors along with the French wine universities are still the best and known all over the world. Many French engineers and winemakers are exporting their “savoir faire” and are still the leading world reference. Moreover some producers have understood the fact that, alone they could not compete against huge companies such as those from Chile; Chilean companies capable of producing cheap and good wine, with special marketing techniques to promote their production onto every market and especially towards younger generations. [...]
[...] Indeed that these are Canadian, American, or French, the buyer only sees options. On labels we can read all the "compulsory" said mentions but also the said “optional” mentions. In fact, many wine bottles have two labels but some are not very helpful. Concerning the more successful wines, the front label presents the wine's name and attracts the consumers' eyes while the back label gives a little bit more information, ranging from really helpful suggestions like “this wine tastes delicious with this kind of food” to Concerning sales of French wine, the final buyer can be lost among the abundance of the information that contains a large number of our French “easy” labels. [...]
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