Crowdsourcing in Wine Business: Co-Creation and Fundraising Experiences

Thanks to the development of Web 2.0 tools and applications, crowdsourcing-based business models, in which the ‘crowd’ takes on a proactive role in the markets, being engaged in co-creation of value and in funding producers and their projects, are emerging worldwide. The aim of this chapter is to achieve a deeper understanding of the opportunities offered by crowdsourcing in wine business. Given both the novelty of the phenomenon and the exploratory nature of this research, a qualitative multiple-case study approach is used with the purpose of presenting cases of major interest as benchmarks. Overall, crowdsourcing is ideally suited as both a new approach to the radically changing consumer profile and as a source of funding for small entrepreneurs facing difficulties in accessing other forms of financing.