Modeling wine consumers preferences: How different can consumers be?

Wine is a complex product. The preferences for it are not only highly heterogeneous throughout the population, but also susceptible to context. The objective of this study is to discover and measure these preferences, focusing on non-sensory attributes of wine. To identify the most relevant non-sensory attributes of wine, from the consumers’ standpoint, four sources were considered: existing literature, a Delphi survey (short questionnaire applied to wine marketing experts), 14 in-depth interviews to consumers and a web survey answered by 843 wine consumers. Not all sources were consistent on which attributes were the most important. Notably, consumers did not pointed out price as a relevant attribute on the web survey, even though several in-depth interviewed consumers mentioned it as a relevant. Six wine attributes were selected for inclusion in the choice experiment: grape variety, alcohol level, label design, recommendations, price and discounts. An efficient experimental design was developed. A web based stated preference survey was applied to 274 regular wine consumers (all of whom had already answered the previous web survey). All of these consumers have high income (among the richest 20% of the Chilean population), 28% of them are women and 33% are 35 years old or younger. The experiment simulated a purchase, at a retail store, for a casual meal with friends. A fixed fictional brand was used for all wines on the experiment. With this data several discrete choice models were estimated, including mixed logit and hybrid choice models. Grape variety was found to be the main driver of preferences. Evidence of preference for higher alcohol levels was also discovered. Price proved to be highly endogenous, as it is strongly related to wine’s expected quality. Recommendation by a friend was preferred to that of wine critics, except in the case of (self-declared) expert consumers. Preferences over label designs showed high variability. The results also suggest that price is a key attribute in the construction of expected quality by the consumer, before tasting the product.