CONSUMERS’ ENGAGEMENT IN CO-CREATION OF VALUE AND CROWFUNDING: NAKED WINE AS A BEST PRACTICE

The purpose of this paper is to achieve a deeper understanding of the emerging business model, in which consumers' engagement goes beyond the co-creation of value to include financial support to producers. Starting from a review of the literature, in the first paragraph we highlight how, thanks to the development of Web 2.0, consumer’s role in the market is changing. Then, given the novelty of the phenomenon and the exploratory nature of the research, we have chosen a case-study approach. For this aim, in the second paragraph, we examine the case of a prominent online wine retailer, Naked Wines (“NW”). This option meets the two main aspects of our analysis. NW, through the effective use of the potentialities of the Web 2.0 tools and applications, involves consumers as co-creators of value and works as a crowdfunding platform, allowing customers (Angels and Archangels) to invest in wines, before that they are produced, financing and supporting the business of small scale winemakers. In the third paragraph, we discuss the results the interviews, realized through questionnaires administrated online to the Archangels (based in UK), aimed to detect their perceived value and their opinion on NW in terms of strength and weakness of the business model. Summing up, according to our analysis NW experience could be considered as a best practice for other business characterized by highly differentiated products and small scale producers, that have difficulties to access to credit and to supermarkets