The certifying role of distributors in the natural wine market

Behind the buzzword “natural wines” lies a fragmented world of farmers following sustainable production practices not necessarily represented by organic or biodynamic certifications. Despite the growing interest in more sustainable wines, this field’s lack of regulations and standard certifications confuses consumers. To overcome this problem, natural wine distributors have started to label the bottles they resell with their logo, acting as a certifying agency and exploiting digital communication to inform customers about the naturalness of their wine selection. Through a two-stage analysis, this research aims to investigate this phenomenon from a consumer perspective. The first step will explore how customers’ experience and perception of available information in distributors’ e-commerce platforms affect the credibility of distributors’ labels. Furthermore, the label’s credibility is expected to influence the willingness to pay more for distributor’s labelled wines and the intention to buy other sustainable foods. The first analysis will also investigate the possible moderation effect of consumers’ sustainable consumption behaviour, green consumer confusion and the preferred communication channel (online articles, newsletters and podcasts). The second analysis will compare distributors labelled with organic and biodynamic certified wines in a hypothetical experimental setting, through which consumers will be asked to choose the preferred label according to different prices. This research will shed light on the perception of distributors’ labels and provide helpful evidence for practitioners, from wine bars to winemakers and policymakers, highlighting the need for a unified certification for natural wines.