Cross-Cultural Comparison of Social Media Usage in the Wine Industry: Differences between the United States and Germany

Social media has become an important part of marketing strategies of wineries around the world, as it provides more than just pure advertisement, but also interactive communication with the customer. In November 2013, two similar surveys among wineries in the United States and in Germany were analyzed in terms of usage and understanding of this medium. This chapter shows how the wineries have adopted this new tool and how they use it for their own purposes. It also reveals their problems and skepticism and gives a good overview of its general acceptance. The results show that the differences between the US wineries and their German counterparts are sometimes immense, although the majority in both countries rated the importance of social media at a similar high level.