Study on promoting companies specialized in the production of wine from Iaşi county (Romania) by implementing online marketing (case study)

Abstract

Online promotion of wine products is a new but indispensable approach in all promotional activities initiated by companies and producers of wine, whereas there is a need for a greater focus on this specific market, not separated from the real one, but a new component, increasingly prevalent. The new market, where demand is getting bigger in our country and where consumers are becoming more and more faithful to this type of promotion, is the online environment, which generated, as a response from manufacturers and distributors in almost all food industry areas, online marketing. Promoting in the virtual environment follows the same stages of development as any promoting strategy from other environments of intersection with customers: initial research, market segmentation, setting goals, market positioning, marketing mix, implementation of the promotional campaign itself and the implementation and post implementation control. The key features of wine products online promoting is interactivity and socialization. Internet communication occurs in two directions, unlike traditional marketing, which is unidirectional. The other characteristic of virtual promo-tional methods - socialization characterizes the future of cyberspace. The research purpose is not to separate the new form of promotion of other forms of nonvirtual marketing activities, but to emphasize that online marketing is the component that should not be missing from any promotional cam-paign launched by a company. The research was based on information provided by the S.C. Cotnari S.A. Department of Marketing. In order to determine the characteristics of online communication and modern promoting trends, we analyzed the website and social media accounts of this wine producer, as well as news portals and blogs. Questionnaires were applied on a sample of 133 consumers, to analyze the impact on their use of online marketing. The studied sample consisted of consumers of wine and, most of them, Internet users, from urban or rural areas. Each questionnaire contained 16 questions, with a total of 63 variables, and aimed to compare the behavior of respondents towards online promotion activity of S.C. Cotnari S.A., Iaşi county.