The gap between wine expert ratings and consumer preferences

Abstract

Purpose -Expert wine awards are commonly used by consumers to reduce complexity in wine choice but little is known about expert vs non-expert perceptions of sensory wine quality. This paper aims to examine if expert ratings are suitable quality indicators for consumers and whether there are certain groups of consumers that find expert awards more useful than others. Design/methodology/approach -The paper compares German consumer ratings obtained in a sensory laboratory with German Agricultural Society's quality competition awards. it tests for the correspondence between expert and non-expert ratings and for the concordance within the nonexpert group. Estimation of a linear mixed model serves to identify consumer-side variables with an influence on individual rating distance. Findings -Correspondence between expert and non-experts and concordance within the non-expert group were found to be insignificant. Experienced wine consumers with sufficient specific knowledge and superior self-reported sensory skills better replicated expert ratings. Research limitations/implications -With 216 wine ratings obtained from 36 German consumers, the number of observations is small. Future research should verify above findings by considering more consumers and the stability of ratings across time. Practical implications -The findings suggest that although some consumer segments may find expert awards to be useful decision cues, for a large portion of the market, there is demand for a more consumer-orientated system of sensory quality evaluation and labelling. Originality/value -This paper is the first to address the usefulness of expert ratings to novice and experienced wine consumer populations. The statistical procedures employed (including linear mixed modelling) are shown to be useful techniques to handle the repeated measurement nature of the data.

Understanding consumer preferences for Shiraz wine and Cheddar cheese pairings

“…An attempt to explain the differences observed in effect sizes between these two studies by conducting a comparison of the two different consumer groups is not possible, as limited wine behaviour data and wine involvement and knowledge information were described by Lattey et al (2010). Schiefer and Fischer (2008) collected socio-demographic and wine consumption and behavioural data not dissimilar to ours. They then compared these German wine consumers' quality ratings with expert quality awards for German Riesling wines and found that wine consumers with wine experience of between 4.5 and 24.5 years better replicated expert ratings (Schiefer & Fischer, 2008).…”

“…Schiefer and Fischer (2008) collected socio-demographic and wine consumption and behavioural data not dissimilar to ours. They then compared these German wine consumers' quality ratings with expert quality awards for German Riesling wines and found that wine consumers with wine experience of between 4.5 and 24.5 years better replicated expert ratings (Schiefer & Fischer, 2008). Notably, our consumer cohort averaged 22.6 years wine experience.…”

Market price differentials for food packaging characteristics

“…This large amount of missing data poses severe estimation problems (Kamakura, Basuroy, & Boatwright, 2006). Second, there are several sensory studies which found a disconnect between consumers' blind product preferences and expert evaluations (Delgado & Guinard, 2011;Goldstein et al, 2008;Schiefer & Fischer, 2008), suggesting that critics' ratings are only very limitedly informative of consumers' sensory preferences. Last, there is a potential model specification endogeneity issue for those critics who do not assess wines blindly, as price was found to exert a very strong subliminal effect on human product evaluation (Plassmann, O'Doherty, Shiv, & Rangel, 2008).…”

How aspects of a wine’s place affect consumers’ authenticity perceptions and purchase intentions

“…One reason a wine's region is important to consumers is because wine can be classified as credence good, as wine lacks easily comparable attributes (Schiefer and Fischer, 2008). While some products are easy to evaluate before purchase and easy to evaluate after purchase and consumption (i.e.…”