Preferences for eco certified wines in the United States

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to analyze the wine industry’s response to changing societal attitudes towards the environment. Environmental considerations are now an increasingly important factor in both production and purchasing behavior. While many eco-certifications exist, there is still consumer confusion between the multitude of eco wine certifications, lack of clarity about what consumers think about the wines, and not enough data about their willingness to pay (WTP) for these environmental characteristics. Design/methodology/approach This study clarifies what the various wine eco certifications are, quantifies consumer knowledge and ascertains their WTP for five environmental or sustainable wine certifications, namely, biodynamic, fair trade, organic, natural and sustainable. The authors surveyed 456 wine drinkers in the USA. Findings The authors found that millennials, women, unmarried individuals, those purchasing eco-certified foods, low-income individuals and those looking to celebrate a special occasion have a higher WTP for eco-certified wines compared to respondents who are older, male, married, do not buy eco-certified goods, have higher incomes and are purchasing the wine for a regular occasion. They recommend marketing and targeting those in the former group for environmental or sustainable wines. Originality/value The study is the only research project, of this kind, to evaluate five types of eco-certifications for wine in a single WTP analysis.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Consumers’ Motives in Purchasing and Consuming Quality Greek Wine

“…The results presented above for the quality wine choices by the consumers are in accordance with those results recorded recently, but before the pandemic, in literature by others too. These are for the traditional parameters of our findings such as the region of origin [10], the variety of grapes [14], the price [15], and the quality certificates [18], and for the sustainability parameters [17,56], the organic [22], without alcohol [25], and without sulfite [21]. Furthermore for the organoleptic parameters of our findings similar results are recorded too [73,74], and for the appearance parameters such as brand name [16], and labeling [51].…”

“…Regarding the civil state of the participants, 39.0% were married, 55.4% single, 4.8% were divorced and only 0.8% were widows. It is worth mentioning that there was a significant percentage of young participants by 41.8% (students, at the age of [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] in the study which gives a better prospective, value to the results obtained, since the new generation shows better the trends of the future.…”

“…Sustainability has also become a key issue for the consumers and the industry [17]. The certifications show new selection criteria for the wine of consumers [18]. The consumers' preference for organic wines is heterogenous [19].…”

Organic and Conventional Grape Growing in Italy: a Technical Efficiency Comparison Using a Parametric Approach

“…[65][66][67], living in urban areas [e.g. 56,68], millennials and young adults [69,70] and women [e.g. 55,56,67].…”

Conjoint analysis to evaluate consumer preference on certified agricultural products in the Central Taiwan

“…For Taiwan, the research in determining the most preferred logo is important to be evaluated because Taiwan has a number of logos to certify food and agricultural products in markets. Previous studies that evaluated different food logos have been discussed in many countries, such as China, European countries and the USA [10,12,22,23]. In Taiwan, the studies on certified products and fair-trade certification have been conducted, such as for coffee and beans.…”