The Impact of the Covid-Related Recession on Italian Wineries

The goal of the paper is to investigate about the impact of the crisis generated by Covid-19 on the Italian wine sector and how technological innovation has contributed to the going concern of Italian wineries. As is well known, the slowdown in the national economies and, particularly, the dramatic reduction in the tourist flows, has affected the “ho.Re.Ca.” industry, that is strictly connected to the agri-food sector; but nevertheless, the latter managed to maintain good level of profitability both for its characteristic of satisfying unavoidable basic need and for the change in the eating habits of people, who now prepare and consume meals at their own home. Some researches show that Italian wine sector suffered a drastic reduction in turnover growth rates during the months of lockdown, but they also argue that technological innovation has allowed to some wineries to overcome the crisis. In the wine sector, during the pandemic emergency, the e-commerce infrastructure has become the main success factor. The questions that then arise are the following: “How does Covid-19 impact on the main financial results of Italian wineries? Have digital sales allowed revenues not to decrease, causing a change in the sales channel, or have not been able to replace the traditional buying experience? Is the present emergency an opportunity, instead of a threat, to make Italian wineries’ economic performance boost through e-commerce?”. To test our thesis and to answer to the research questions, we set a data sample of Italian wineries and we collected, in addition to the main financial and economic ratios, before and after the pandemic emergency, some e-commerce indicators,. Applying descriptive statistical techniques to the data set, we found interesting results on the resilience of Italian wine sector and on its perspective growth.