Sustainability and Quality in Wine Pricing: Insights from the Primitivo E-Commerce Market

Emanuela Tria, Francesco Di Cosola, Francesco Bozzo (), Arturo Casieri, Ervin Zeka and Alessandro Petrontino
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Emanuela Tria: Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science (Di.S.S.P.A.), University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via G. Amendola, 165/a, 70126 Bari, Italy
Francesco Di Cosola: Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science (Di.S.S.P.A.), University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via G. Amendola, 165/a, 70126 Bari, Italy
Francesco Bozzo: Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science (Di.S.S.P.A.), University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via G. Amendola, 165/a, 70126 Bari, Italy
Arturo Casieri: Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science (Di.S.S.P.A.), University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via G. Amendola, 165/a, 70126 Bari, Italy
Ervin Zeka: Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science (Di.S.S.P.A.), University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via G. Amendola, 165/a, 70126 Bari, Italy
Alessandro Petrontino: Department of Soil, Plant and Food Science (Di.S.S.P.A.), University of Bari Aldo Moro, Via G. Amendola, 165/a, 70126 Bari, Italy

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 18, 1-21

Abstract: The wine sector faces urgent challenges related to climate change, resource constraints, rising energy costs, and shifting consumption patterns. In this context, sustainability represents a lever of competitiveness and resilience, enabling producers to differentiate themselves through their connection with the territory and the preservation of artisanal practices. This is particularly evident for native varieties, such as the Apulian Primitivo, whose market repositioning is based on production choices that combine sustainability and craftsmanship, generating wines with distinctive organoleptic characteristics while also contributing to the environmental, economic, and social protection of the production areas. At the same time, the spread of e-commerce offers new opportunities to enhance these characteristics: online descriptions enrich the communication of details compared to the physical label, reducing information asymmetries and making signs of quality and sustainability more visible. Therefore, this study applies a hedonic model to estimate the implicit price of such practices, analyzing 656 Primitivo labels through simultaneous quantile regressions. The results show that sensory characteristics, such as alcohol content and ageing, determine the price throughout distribution, while identity and sustainable attributes have heterogeneous effects: ecological practices and Geographical Indications affect the lower quantiles, while indigenous yeasts and sapling vines are configured as premium signals in the upper segments.

Keywords: winemaking; local grape; hedonic price model; quantile regression; digital market; product differentiation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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