The Integration of the Blockchain Technology Into Wine Tourism

Introduction

Globalization and the companies’ search for a new market have complicated all of the processes about product management. For instance, there may be several suppliers from many different countries in the production and supply chain process of a product. The processes such as customs clearance, invoicing and transportation have to be carried out together at the same time. Thus, this chaos in supply chain affects the performance of supply chain in a negative way and increases the risk perception of the consumer about the product. This chaos, this disorganization and these delays in the supply chain cause the consumers to experience some problems such as loss of confidence in product (Christopher 2011). On the other hand, block chain technology ensures confidence to consumers in both food safety and the sustainability of safe shopping (İrak&Topçu, 2020). When the wine tourist is able to track the whole journey of the wine purchased from the vineyard to the retailer and have the specific information about the product, it is possible for him/her to make stronger decisions (Montecchi, Plangger & Etter, 20 19). As a matter of fact, Industry 4.0 has transformed lifestyles, emotions and ideas of wine tourists and it has also led to the emergence of new consumption patterns and new paradigms. In 21st century, the winds of change have inevitably strengthened due to both the effects of technological improvements and the pandemic. These winds of change have also affected the wine tourism and changed the behaviour patterns of the wine tourists. It is considered that all these changes are going to improve the quality of wine (Apelasyon, 2020).

Blockchain technology, which is the most popular technology of Industry 4.0, offers radical solutions to the problems seen in production processes. Blockchain technology promises a high level of trust to stakeholders for several reasons such as enabling production processes to be more transparent, increasing the traceability of transactions during the production and preventing fraud. This technology reduces costs and accelerates transactions by eliminating intermediaries (Akben & Çinar, 2018). Blockchain technology, which has been in use since 2008, is being used more commonly day by day. Even though it has not been matured enough yet, the blockchain technology is estimated to be used more intensively in several different sectors to share information in the future. The applications that can be built in wine tourism and wine supply chain thanks to this technology are extremely exciting. Thanks to the blockchain applications, wine supply chain and wine tourism have been obtaining significant gains in some important aspects such as cost, trust, speed, transparency and quality. With the help of blockchain technology, the data flow in wine supply chain has been gaining acceleration and auditing has become easier due to the autonomous nature of this technology. On the one hand, the data obtained via blockchain technology, can be used as a data mine in wine tourism and wine supply chain. In this point of view, this technology ensures food safety in a sustainable way in wine tourism and wine supply chain and increases productivity in wine tourism and wine supply chain as the need for workforce is decreased. On the other hand, it is considered that wine tourism and wine supply chain are going to obtain a more autonomous structure owing to this technology. In conclusion, it is considerably crucial for companies to use new generation technologies like blockchain to improve their efficiency (İrak & Topçu, 2020).