Blurred vision: understanding barriers to initiating collaborative market driving

Purpose This paper aims to examine why many producers of origin-bound products struggle to collectively drive increases in market value, despite shared interests. The authors apply a collaborative market driving (CMD) lens to the early stages of collective efforts, to identify the key motivators, visioning processes and explore why CMD can fail to initiate. Design/methodology/approach The authors present a qualitative case study of the Western Australian monofloral honey industry. Data includes 64 producers’ and distributors’ online content and 30 interviews with stakeholders. Leximancer was used to map marketing communications, and participant narratives were thematically analysed using terroir and authenticity frameworks. Findings Stakeholders recognised the potential of terroir to support a shared, origin-based market vision. The authors found alignment between individual authenticity claims and collective terroir narratives. However, CMD efforts failed to initiate due to persistent barriers: financial instability, firm turnover, limited collaboration and conflicting priorities. Research limitations/implications Findings are based on a single case where CMD has not succeeded; future work should explore how these barriers may be overcome in other contexts. Practical implications The authors outline four key barriers for initiating CMD: (i) dissensus; (ii) individualism; (iii) disconnection and (iv) inconsistency. The authors propose practical solutions to these barriers, which may motivate producers to initiate concerted action to pursue CMD more effectively, while opening up several future research opportunities. Originality/value This study uniquely explores CMD as a failed process, contributing a framework that combines terroir and authenticity to the development of collective market visions, while helping to explain the barrier which prevent tangible market driving action.