Identifying wine consumers interested in environmentally sustainable production practices

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to characterize several wine consumer segments who were “likely” to sample (i.e. taste before purchasing) wine from vineyards using cover crops, a sustainable production practice that reduces herbicide applications, and identify those with a greater probability of being a viable target market based on survey responses. Design/methodology/approach A total of 956 wine consumers from the Mid-Atlantic and boarding US states were separated into segments based on an ECHAID (exhaustive Chi-square automatic interaction detector) classification tree from internet survey responses. Findings Out of the 12 created segments, 6 (n = 530, 72% of training data) contained participants who were at least 1.02 times (index score =102%) more “likely” to try the wine compared to the overall sample and were willing to pay $18.99 for a 750-mL bottle of the wine, which included a $1 surcharge to cover associated production costs. Of these, three (n = 195, 26%) had the greatest potential for which a marketing plan could be developed (index scores of 109%–121%), with over half in each segment willing to pay $20.99 for the bottle of wine, which could motivate growers to consider implementing this sustainable strategy. Originality/value Although several segments of participants were “likely” to sample the sustainably produced wine, an ECHAID classification tree allowed us to identify participants who would not pay $18.99 for a 750-mL bottle of wine, even after learning about the use of cover crops and the trade-off ($1 bottle surcharge). By narrowing the number of potential “likely” segments to those with a greater potential of sampling the wine, more purposeful marketing strategies can be developed based on demographics, attitudes, and behaviors defined in the model.

Shrinking the market space: consumer (overlapping) preferences for organic wines and three alternative competitors

“…The current study compared four distinct clean labels in wine production to measure the monetary preferences of regular Italian wine consumers in the growing clean-label category to identify specific market segments with heterogeneous interest for these wines. Recent literature suggests that consumers reward the presence of sustainability attributes on wine (Kelley et al, 2021;Tait et al, 2019;Sellers-Rubio and Nicolau-Gonzalbez, 2016;Sellers, 2016) and our results confirm expectations for clean labeling. Considering the entire sample, all the four labels received a positive and significant price premium compared to the conventional counterpart.…”

“…Nevertheless, the variety of sustainable practices and the uncertainty upon the economic return on sustainability investments are a source of concern in the wine industry. Extending recent studies that have investigated how consumers respond to new sustainable production practices (Kelley et al, 2021;Capitello et al, 2021), the current paper aims to explore consumer preferences towards IJWBR 35,3 different types of clean wines, comparing more and less well-known claims in the wine landscape.…”

Toward understanding sophisticated markets and consumers: a win-win strategic alternative

“…Within certain segments of consumers, ethical and environmental claims have a stronger influence on purchase decisions than the price of the product/service (Perez-Castillo and Vera-Martinez, 2021). Within the wine industry, there is a segment of consumers willing to pay extra for sustainably produced wines (Kelley et al , 2022). However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the importance of these ethical components as a characteristic of sophisticated markets has not been explored.…”

Fenntarthatóság a magyar kis- és középvállalati szektorban

“…A legújabb kutatások (Acciarini, Borelli, Capo, Cappa, & Sarrocco, 2021;Kelley, Todd, Hopfer, & Centinari, 2022;Csutora et al, 2022) kiemelik a vevők fenntarthatósági érzékenységének növekedését, így amennyiben a vállalatok továbbra is szeretnék megőrizni vevőiket, új technológiákkal, eljárásokkal kell bizonyítaniuk a fenntarthatóság irányában való elkötelezettségüket. Nincsenek standard megoldások, csak vélelmezhető, hogy az innovatív üzleti modellek nem nélkülözhetik a fenntarthatóság és a digitalizáció kínálta lehetőségeket (Acciarini et al, 2021;Singla et al, 2019;Ónodi & Répáczki, 2022;Csutora et al, 2022).…”