Examining the Online Wine Tourism Experience of California Wineries

Online wine tourism is boosting the level of competition among wineries and wine regions around the world. This paper presents and extends a proven framework for examining the strategic orientation of winery web sites. By treating winery web sites as intensive information environments this paper shows how they can have a strategic impact on perceptions. Using a modified AIPD framework and statistical analyses, the authors show how certain California wineries are able to fully project the wine tourism experience online while targeting strategic perception goals that are effective at building virtual brand equity and boosting winery visitations at the same time. The result of this research indicates that it is possible to measure and evaluate both the web experience and the strategic perception aspects of winery web sites.