Marketing Wine on the Web

E-commerce is penetrating agriculture, particularly for selling products directly to consumers. The wine industry is a case in point. The industry has long-term experience in direct marketing. Many wineries welcome patrons at their premises for wine tasting and for selling wine to them. Moreover, where the practice is allowed, shipping wine directly to consumers without the assistance of trade intermediaries is a significant sales channel. E-commerce was adopted early in the wine industries of wired high-income countries and the wine industry provides an opportunity for studying the adoption, use, and impact of e-commerce. Moreover, because e-commerce has not spread evenly through all branches of agriculture, lessons learned from the wine industry may provide useful insights for entrepreneurs and policy makers concerned with sections of agriculture or the food industry where e-commerce adoption lags behind. The specific objectives of the dissertation research project which we report here therefore were: (1) to assess the extent of e-commerce diffusion in the wine industries of Australia, California, Germany; (2) to identify e-commerce practices used by wineries for marketing wine; (3) to explain differences in wineries' e-commerce practices, and (4) to derive insights and implications for sections of agriculture that lag behind in ecommerce adoption.