How to Foster Online Wine Purchase? Empirical Evidences from Italy

The importance of e-commerce platforms for commercialization of goods and services has been widely explored in marketing literature. E-commerce is emerging as a relevant distribution channel in the wine industry also. The wine e-commerce platforms show a slower growth rate when compared to other goods and services categories – such as electronic and digital products. This is particularly true in the Italian context where the total volume of e-commerce sales in the food and drink sector represents less than 1% of the total online sales. Therefore, it is important to investigate the underlying mechanisms explaining consumers’ positive and negative intentions to purchase wine online. This will provide theoretical and practical insights to marketing strategists of the wine industry. Hence, this study proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model concerning the antecedents of consumers’ intention to purchase wine online. Specifically, the objective is to identify the differences that are specific in the context of the wine buying process. Data were collected from a sample of Italian online consumers who habitually purchase wine online. Confirmatory factor analysis (Cfa) and structural equation modeling (Sem) were used to test the hypothesized relationships. Results show that product information availability and convenience propensity significantly influence the digital channel selection and, consequently, loyalty and patronage intention.