Abstract

The international wine industry is characterized by the traditional presence of the old-world wineries and the innovative eruption of new producing countries. Further, the new Industry 4.0 paradigm, with digitization, big data analytics, and so on, is heavily influencing the wine business. Within this new competitive framework, gaining an understanding of online search behavior is becoming a critical challenge for the world's wine industry. Consumers search for information mainly through online search engines such as Google. Therefore, in the wine industry, there is a growing interest in utilizing user-generated data to gain insights into consumer behavior. Further, big data analytics could provide opportunities to develop new knowledge to reshape our understanding of the field and to support decision making in the wine industry. Even though the internet has a great impact on information search behavior, several aspects of online user and consumer search are not yet clear and need further investigation. In order to fill the gap, the aim of this work is to describe and analyze online search for Italian wines by examining user-generated data in the US, the world's largest wine market. Our first results from a qualitative research depict the scenario for the top Italian wines, Prosecco and Moscato, in comparison with the top French and Spanish wines (Champagne and Cava), in the US online market, by pointing out to their low visibility from a competitive perspective. Therefore, investment in customer knowledge, by utilizing user- generated data and organic keywords, could be relevant for wineries that need insights into consumer behavior.