Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore South African and Italian consumers' attitude toward online wine purchasing. In detail, through the application of the technology acceptance model (TAM), this research intends to explain the antecedents of consumers actual online purchasing of wine in South Africa and Italy.Design/methodology/approachTwo questionnaire-based surveys were conducted, yielding a sample of 190 consumers in South Africa and 179 in Italy. Data were analyzed through several techniques including t-tests, principal component factor analyses, and binary logistic regressions.FindingsOverall, the findings show that South African and Italian online wine consumers are more similar than the offline wine consumers. However, perceived usefulness has an impact on the use of the online channel to purchase wine in Italy but not in South Africa, whereas perceived complexity has an effect in South Africa but not in Italy.Research limitations/implicationsThis study adopts a convenience sampling technique, suggesting that the used samples are not representative of the whole population. Moreover, TAM offers a simple and clear understanding of the actual use of wine e-commerce but overlooks other potential explanatory factors.Practical implicationsTargeting online wine consumers in South Africa and Italy opens up the opportunity for using cross-national highly standardized product and communication strategies. However, different approaches are required to convert offline wine consumers to online wine consumers in South Africa and Italy.Originality/valueThis is the first cross-national study investigating consumers' attitude toward online wine purchasing in South Africa and Italy. Moreover, it offers a comparison of online and offline wine consumers in the two countries. In addition, the research offers a new point of view over consumers of Italy and South Africa, two important countries in terms of wine production and consumption that can be very beneficial for wineries owners and managers.
Highlights
Wine producers are increasingly adopting direct-to-consumer distribution channels, ranging from wine tasting room sales, wine clubs, and online sales (Higgins et al, 2015)
Wine e-commerce is becoming increasingly popular as the consumer can access information about wine through the web (Barber et al, 2006), and wine producers have the opportunity to expand into markets that may be unreachable otherwise (Higgins et al, 2015; Limayem et al, 2000)
The aim of this study is to determine the differences in consumer perception, behavior, and attitude toward online wine purchasing focusing on the cross-cultural comparison of South African and Italian consumers
Summary
Wine producers are increasingly adopting direct-to-consumer distribution channels, ranging from wine tasting room sales, wine clubs, and online sales (Higgins et al, 2015). Wine e-commerce is becoming increasingly popular as the consumer can access information about wine through the web (Barber et al, 2006), and wine producers have the opportunity to expand into markets that may be unreachable otherwise (Higgins et al, 2015; Limayem et al, 2000). The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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