GRIN Verlag An Evaluation of Online Wine Merchants That Are Successful in the German Market

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Market research, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, language: English, abstract: The objective of this paper is to identify which elements make online wine merchants successful in the German market. The identified factors will give guidance to companies to take managerial actions to improve their business model and marketing investment actions. The qualitative method used to identify elements that contribute to the success of online wine merchants was a semi-structured interview, which gathered insights from companies of the industry. Moreover, secondary sources were used to make an evaluation and to link with the results from the interviews. The findings obtained from the interviews show that the term success relates to having customers returning to the store. Moreover, other factors such as pricing, product accessibility, product information asymmetry, customer support, trust, and shipping times play a critical role in the customers purchasing decision. The conclusions of this paper sustain that online wine merchants should follow a multi-channel selling strategy. Moreover, it is essential to provide excellent customer service that generates trust. Also, customers feedback plays a vital role for companies to help improve processes as the need to create a positive word of mouth between wine consumers is critical nowadays.