Exploring how consumer cooperatives might strategically incorporate social media to distribute wine

Abstract

This research advances our understanding of disruptions to marketing channels in the digital world by investigating the viability of consumer cooperative systems which are envisioned as multi‐actor constructed networks using social media (SM) platforms. It introduces the concepts of “social media consumer wine cooperator” as a new distribution channel for wine and investigates the consumer's intention to participate in an SM and become a wine cooperator. Relying on the uses and gratifications theory (UGT), we adopted a quantitative research inquiry with data gathered using an online survey involving a sample of 486 French consumers. We empirically tested the relationships among four factors: attitude toward buying wine based on SM recommendations, perceived risks, intention to buy wine on SM, and consumer intention to become an SM wine cooperator. Findings indicate that the intention to be an SM wine cooperator is positively correlated with attitude toward buying wine based on SM recommendations and the intention to purchase wine on SM. To finish with, we link the concept of the consumer wine co‐op to the current debate in the literature on centralized versus decentralized (built on top of blockchain networks) social media platforms, opening the door for future research avenues.