Title: Crowdfunding in wine business as financing opportunity for smaller wineries

Authors: Giuseppe Festa; Gerardino Metallo; Maria Teresa Cuomo; Mario Situm

Addresses: Department of Economic and Statistical Sciences, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II No. 132, 84084 Fisciano, Salerno, Italy ' Department of Economic and Statistical Sciences, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II No. 132, 84084 Fisciano, Salerno, Italy ' Department of Economic and Statistical Sciences, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II No. 132, 84084 Fisciano, Salerno, Italy ' Institute for Corporate Restructuring, FH Kufstein Tirol University of Applied Sciences, Andreas Hofer-Straße 7, A-6330 Kufstein, Austria

Abstract: Crowdfunding is an innovative form of financial support for enterprises, most of all when smaller and engaged in ethical/sustainable issues. This is true also for wineries: in fact, they are ideal subjects for crowdfunding experiments, especially if active also in vine cultivation. Very few platforms, however, are currently available especially for wine crowdfunding: one of the most important is Fundovino, whose so far accomplished projects provide no recourse to dividend from equity, but recourse to in-kind return (above all wine, of course). In other platforms, wine crowdfunding could find attraction also in equity (e.g., WineFunding), but in every circumstance of wine crowdfunding a sentiment of involvement/engagement/commitment of the backers seems present, as clearly emerges from the investigation on Fundovino as case study. The research, with exploratory nature, analyses the possible mix of reward (how), together with the presumable expectations of the backers (why), for wine crowdfunding projects with non-equity finality.

Keywords: crowdfunding; wine business; financial support; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; smaller wineries.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGSB.2019.100126

International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, 2019 Vol.10 No.3, pp.278 - 292

Received: 02 Jun 2018
Accepted: 13 Nov 2018
Published online: 09 Jun 2019 *

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