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Purpose Social media use has increased in recent years, and businesses are looking to capitalize on the plethora of marketing opportunities afforded by this digital shift by paying attention to user-generated content (UGC) posted on review websites. Leveraging UGC can help small businesses gain a competitive advantage over late-adopters. At the same time, there is evidence to suggest that small businesses do not have the time, resources or skill level to properly use social media to create a competitive advantage. This paper aims to explore how wine tourism businesses can analyze consumer feedback on online review websites to evaluate customer perceptions and expectations and generate more effective ways to improve customer satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative method of thematic analysis was used to map out consumer reviews online to assess service satisfaction and dissatisfaction. A total of 848 reviews were gathered and qualitatively analyzed from two online review websites (TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com) using open and axial coding and thematic analysis. Findings The results show that wine consumers are interested in the hedonic aspects of their experience, are most often attracted to wineries as a special outing and focus on factors such as scenery and atmosphere, service quality and products in their reviews. Hence, service and sales personnel have a key opportunity to capitalize on generating better service experiences through social media analysis. Originality/value The present study fills a gap by providing a more in-depth, qualitative exploration of the wine consumers’ psychology and experience, including factors such as atmosphere and special occasions. Furthermore, this study uses interpretive, manual coding to pick up on nuanced themes that are often missed by using automated qualitative analysis software or by looking at frequency counts in isolation.
Garner et al. (Mon,) studied this question.