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Original Research Article

Wine Online and Digital Decanting: Naturalness Effects in Large-Scale Consumer Reviews of Wine: Special Issue "Transforming wine value chains – Adapting to a changing world"

(Just Accepted)
  • Michał Folwarczny,
  • Magalie Dubois,
  • Vincent Clerc,
  • Bruno Schivinski,
  • Tobias Otterbring
Michał Folwarczny
University of Galway

Published 2026-08-27

Keywords

  • natural wine,
  • naturalness bias,
  • psychological essentialism,
  • authenticity,
  • sentiment analysis,
  • computational linguistics,
  • electronic word-of-mouth
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Folwarczny, M., Dubois, M., Clerc, V., Schivinski, B., & Otterbring, T. (2026). Wine Online and Digital Decanting: Naturalness Effects in Large-Scale Consumer Reviews of Wine: Special Issue "Transforming wine value chains – Adapting to a changing world". Wine Economics and Policy. Retrieved from https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/wep/article/view/19943

Copyright (c) 2024 Michał Folwarczny, Magalie Dubois, Vincent Clerc, Bruno Schivinski, Tobias Otterbring

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigates how the naturalness shapes online wine reviews through the lens of information asymmetry and credence attributes.

Methodology: We analyze over six million consumer reviews from a global platform using computational linguistics to compare evaluative and affective responses between natural and conventional wines.

Findings: Compared to conventional wines, natural wines command a twenty percent price premium and elicit longer consumer reviews; however, they systematically receive lower quality ratings and yield less positive per-word sentiment. Further, they have a more polarized emotional profile marked by increased negative emotions, such as disgust and anger, combined with slightly higher levels of joy.

Originality: The current findings challenge the natural-is-better bias and advance authenticity theory and wine economics by demonstrating that naturalness operates as a quality signal that drives expectation disconfirmation rather than hedonic satisfaction.

Implications: Managers of natural wine brands should position naturalness as a credence attribute and implement proactive expectation management regarding variable sensory profiles to mitigate negative affective responses while leveraging the price premium associated with authenticity.

(Just Accepted)

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