A study of Marlborough winery web sites: Do their current formats encourage a beneficial winery-customer relationship?: A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Professional Studies at Lincoln University

Abstract

This paper reports on research that examined Internet adoption by twenty Marlborough wineries and focused on how their current formats are encouraging beneficial consumer relations. The Marlborough wine industry has been a recent global and local success story and wineries appear to have adopted the website as part of an integral strategy based on wine tourism and direct marketing. The study did not engage a laboratory-based website evaluation, but fieldwork captured winery owners' perceptions of how they view benefits and features of their sites. It analysed each web site using Bernet and Stricker's (2001) methodology and the sites were also assessed against components of the New Zealand Model Code for Consumer Protection in Electronic Commerce. Winery website adoption of 100% was found in all sites studied, with features associated with tourism, direct marketing, security and trust being represented. The study found a large number of wineries offering direct online sales; however, the proportional value of such sales was relatively low, leading to the conclusion that the wineries point customers more to their distributors' network meaning that the website is emerging as potentially a pseudo-tourism tool rather than a direct sales channel. The study is significant in that it is one of the few emerging recent works dealing with the relatively new and important global industry associated with wineries' web sites and the relationships they are helping to build with their customers.