The literature about digitalization in agriculture and rural areas is vast and sectorial at the same time. Both international political institutions and practitioners are interested in promoting digital technology, indicating and describing potential benefits and risks. Meanwhile, academics analyze the actual and possible impacts of digital technologies by using case studies. However, the extensive literature makes it challenging to derive a comprehensive synthesis of the possible impacts that digital technologies are and might generate in the rural domains. In the given context, the present work aims at contributing to the construction of a framework providing a first classification of the digital technologies’ impacts to use in both research and a political agenda.
The internet has produced a forward-looking shift in the way we communicate, think and run economic activities around the globe. The revolution in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has generated an innovating process in the agri-food sector that is far from being unwind. The wine industry is a case in point. Indeed, the industry has attempted to address the multifaceted challenges posed by electronic commerce since always. Business to business electronic commerce has been slower to develop than its counterpart, i.e. business to consumer E-commerce. However business to business e-commerce is starting to attract an increased interest, by showing a significant business value in terms of potential. Against this background, the slow development of B2B e-commerce has been linked to regulatory and economic reasons. In order to deal with such stumbling blocks, the paper suggests a shift towards an open platform that is aimed at facilitating transactions and interactions among businesses through a continuous problem-solving process in which trust and value is co-created by producers and customers through relational contracting.
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