A preliminary investigation into e-business stages of development in the Australian wine industry

![CDATA[This paper reports on a preliminary investigation into e-business technology use by Australian winemakers. A model of e-business maturity was developed through a literature review of recently published articles which discussed stage models of e-business growth or maturity. This model was then applied to winemakers identified as being located in the Hunter region of New South Wales, classifying these firms through analysing their web sites. Different to other studies in this area, a single industry and region were selected to avoid confounding factors. The Australian wine industry was selected given: a relatively high level of e-business technology use; these firms' operations are distant from their customers; the price of the product being sold and the interest of customers in the quality of that product; evidence by winemakers wanting to establish strong links with customers (such as using mailing lists, etc.). This study contributes to the research in this area by providing a mechanism to classify the use of e-business technology by organisations. The study also validates the taxonomy by demonstrating that these firms are still at different levels of e-business maturity. Finally the study indicates that further research is needed to determine main reasons as to whether or not Australian winemakers will adopt and use increasingly sophisticated levels of e-business technology.]]