Consumers Rate and Review - Something We Hate and Don’t Look Into - Towards understanding the wine industry’s reactions to the consumer use of new media rating platforms

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to add to the socio-scientific knowledge of the development and effects of new media on the wine industry and thereby to suggest implications for similar forms of consumption. It adds to the knowledge about changing consumer and producer practices in the mediated relationship with a good that cannot be fully experienced until bought. Using similar developments within the travel industry as a guide, contemporary consumer practices such as digital knowledge sharing through rating and reviewing of products hold great potential for consumer engagement. However, the wine industry differentiates itself significantly in its complexity. Therefore, this study aimed to understand how user-driven mobile technology with consumer-created wine reviews are perceived and responded to by this cultural consumption industry. Research Question: How have the marketing practices and strategies of the wine industry responded to the use of consumer-driven mobile rating of wines? Methodological Approach: This thesis draws on a qualitative research approach, explicitly using in-depth interviews. Data was gathered through 17 semi-structured expert interviews with participants directly working in the wine industry. They were recruited employing convenience and snowball sampling at an industry trade fair. The data were analyzed using the grounded theory coding approach. Findings: The results of this study indicate that the wine industry is indeed changing. Herein, producers recognize changes in consumer practices with regards to consumer-generated recommendations and reviews and foresee the future impact they will have on the industry. However, while they mostly agree to the need for amending their marketing and communication strategies, they thus far have been reluctant to do so. That is, they reconstruct culturally inherited boundaries that segment the market, they prefer to apply marketing strategies with which they control reflection of authenticity, and they have limited resources in general. However, the fact that social media marketing in the broader sense is nonetheless invading this culture of resistance can be seen in industry-wide standardized marketing practices using networking tools for the promotion of their wines.