Abstract

The paper develops an exploratory research. It aims to understand the elements considered by a wine company to enter the US market and the characteristics considered to be important for US wine consumers when choosing a wine. For this purpose, the paper conducts two different steps of study: (1) it analyzes the US wine market, through a secondary data set; and (2) it studies a random sample of 4,560 reviews of US wines consumers found on CellarTracker. After a reflection on cultural issues related to the internationalization of companies, the paper presents briefly the theme of cross-cultural management, which is fundamental for the approach to new markets, and then it focuses on the wine industry. The focus will be on the peculiarity of the production of Italian wine companies and their choices of internationalization, particularly in the US market. The analyses show that (1) the US market ranks first in terms of consumption and represents, among other things, the first destination area for Italian sales and (2) the US consumer is strongly focused on the organoleptic properties of the wine.

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