International Journal of Wine Business Research

Purpose – The purpose of this exploratory research paper is twofold. First, to identify how wine is being talked about within the Twitter environment and second to examine whether the constructs of soft and hard value can be demonstrated within the social media, Twitter content. The overall aim is to establish whether Twitter can create value for wine stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach – A netnographic approach has been adopted through the collection of 1,500 English language tweets on the subject of wine which were analysed using Nvivo qualitative data analysis software against the constructs of value found in the literature.

Findings – The early findings suggest that Twitter can create soft value for wine focused businesses but that hard value is not yet strongly evident. Wine marketers need to be more aware of both the content of wine tweets and the profiles of those who tweet.

Practical implications – The use of social media within wine businesses is in its infancy. Wine focused businesses are currently not optimising value creation through Twitter. Whilst Twitter does exhibit value, wine marketers, wine brands and wine retailers are not engaging with consumers who are talking about wine via Twitter.

Originality/value – This paper has provided evidence that there is value within social media, specifically Twitter. The contribution of this paper lies in identifying not only the types of value that wine businesses could develop by embracing Twitter but also how the different profiles use Twitter differently.