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This research is designed to explore Chinese customers' wine purchasing behaviours and to investigate the effect of country‐of‐origin (COO) information on their wine evaluations.

Data were collected from the shopping malls both in Shanghai and Hangzhou, China, using the systematic sampling method. A total 148 usable questionnaires were returned and analysed by SPSS.

The results confirmed that Chinese customers consider COO as the most important factor in their wine evaluation when a single‐cue approach is applied. When a multi‐cue approach is used however the results showed that there was no significant difference in the importance in COO and price as indicators. This research also revealed some salient characteristics of Chinese consumers buying behaviour associated with Chinese culture. When the Chinese are evaluating wine for gift giving and consuming wine in public, they tend to attach more importance to COO than to other variables and are more likely to purchase foreign or imported wine instead of domestic brands.

Only respondents from Shanghai and Hangzhou were chosen, limiting the representativeness of the sample. Future research will be benefited from increased sample size from different geographical regions and by examining the relationship between the consumer demographic characteristics and the COO effects.

The results from this study stand in contrast to previous studies relating to the role of COO in product evaluation. It illustrates the importance of culture in relation to COO.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the service quality dimensions that influence satisfaction with wineries and future intentions to return among Chinese consumers. With the rapidly growing popularity of wine consumption among Chinese consumers, an increasing number of Chinese consumers are visiting wineries in Western countries. However, while substantial research about wine tourism in Western countries has been published, there is very little research available with respect to wine tourism in China and the Chinese winery visitors who visit them.

A convenience sampling method was selected. Specifically, snowball sampling was used to collect the study’s data due to the limited number of Chinese consumers who drink wine and who have been involved with wine tourism. Research assistants who speak Chinese fluently used snowball sampling to recruit Chinese consumers in Yentai region who had participated in wine tourism in the past and asked them to complete the research survey. The research assistants distributed 200 surveys through a snowball sampling and collected a total of 179 responses.

The study’s results suggest that wine tasting operations, such as a variety of wines at tasting room tastings, and the quality of the wines tasted, along with staff attitudes are critical components that influence Chinese wine tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The major contribution of this paper is that it builds on extant wine tourism literature by providing insights into the characteristics of Chinese wine tourists. The paper also illuminates the linkage between winery service quality attributes and Chinese wine tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The results of the study provide a useful guide to both academics and winery operators interested in developing a competitive winery service quality strategy for Chinese wine tourists.

Given the scarcity of literature linking winery service quality attributes and Chinese wine tourists’ satisfaction and loyalty, this study is one of the few studies to explore this relationship.

This paper aims to examine the primary determinants of Chinese consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions of imported organic wines.

This study used a multi-stage data collection via multiple sampling techniques. Data were collected from close to 2,000 Chinese wine drinkers across 33 provincial-level administrative units in China. The consumer data were subject to a two-step structural equation modeling analysis.

Chinese consumers express favorable attitudes and are interested in making a purchase. The results also reveal distinct influences of cognitive and emotional determinants on consumers’ positive attitudes and purchase intentions of organic wines. Health benefits and symbolic value positively influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. Emotional assessment of organic wines, despite exhibiting a positive effect on attitudes, does not drive Chinese consumers’ purchase decisions.

China has become a world leader in consuming wines, especially wines imported from traditional wine producing countries. The increasing health concerns have also prompted Chinese consumers toward favoring organic products. Despite the evident shift in Chinese consumers’ travel expenditure toward food and wines and the growing wine consumption while dining out, existing research is scant in explaining the decision drivers of Chinese consumers’ organic wine purchase. A greater and deeper understanding of Chinese consumers’ purchase decision of organic wines not only provides marketing intelligence for countries exporting wines to China but also is meaningful for international destinations to capture a lucrative market to support local attractions and hospitality businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to determine consumer characteristics, buying behaviour, and the factors that influence the Chinese wine consumer.

The study applies qualitative and quantitative methodology, together with a literature review and a strategic environmental scan of the Chinese wine market and consumer behavior.

Consumer education, wine‐related activities, channels of communication, taste, country of origin, quality, and price rank are found to be important factors influencing the buying and consumption behavior of Chinese consumers.

Results suggest that there is a need for stakeholders to develop and implement informational and educational marketing strategies to educate and inform consumers in ways that reflect their needs and expectations according to demographic characteristics.

The challenge for the stakeholders will be to: penetrate this emerging market to establish presence and capture market share; strive for long‐term growth and profit sustainability; create competitive advantage through core competencies; promote and sell quality products applying the principles of yield management “to charge the right price, to the ideal consumer, at the right time, in the right place”; and build brand loyalty.

The paper offers useful findings for stakeholders in the wine supply chain. Special attention should be given to the alcoholic beverage retailer and hospitality operators for whom wine revenue is the core of aggregate beverage revenue.

The paper contributes to the body of knowledge of consumer behavior in relation to wine consumption in an emerging market. The results benefit players in the wine supply chain; especially retail and hospitality operations.

This research aims to examine Chinese consumers’ wine consumption and purchasing behaviour.

The study, conducted during the Chinese New Year in early 2006, used in‐depth interviews with 15 consumers in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

The results suggest that Chinese consume Chinese spirits for all occasions, yet consume red wine only for special occasions such as Chinese new year and other holidays. A key point for selling red wine to the Chinese is its positive image; drinking red wine is considered trendy and shows good taste. Another key point is consumer perceptions of red wine as healthier than Chinese spirits because wine contains less alcohol. Two other findings are that most Chinese consumers assume all wine is red wine and have little wine knowledge. Most respondents did not know of white wine or that Australia produces wine. Finally, China's culture of face value, mianzi, plays a key role in purchasing and consuming wine. Chinese tend to purchase inexpensive wine for private consumption and public occasions, yielding more mianzi in front of others. In some important occasions, consumers will purchase a foreign (French) red wine to impress their guests and obtain even more mianzi. In most situations, Chinese purchase and consume wine for perceived health and symbolic – lucky or good face – values.

The small sample size is a limitation. Another limitation is that all the respondents lived in the urban area of Guangzhou, one of China's most developed cities. The findings do not generalize to China.

The findings suggest that wine is a symbolic product rather than a necessity product in China; therefore, image is an important attribute for selling wine in China. Furthermore, limited wine knowledge tends to make Chinese consumers rely heavily on price for their wine purchasing decisions, as price relates to mainzi. Chinese consumers’ high awareness of France as a wine making country and their deep‐rooted positive beliefs about French wines pose difficulties for marketing other foreign wines, such as Australian wines, in China.

This is perhaps the first academic study in English of Chinese wine consumption and wine purchasing. It offers important insights on the characteristics of wine consumption and purchasing in China.

The purpose of this paper is to discover the underlying motivations of Chinese wine consumption.

Qualitative focus group interviews were performed on 36 Chinese wine consumers and four focus groups were performed, with participants segmented into groups based on age and gender.

The main findings were that Chinese wine consumers are influenced by face and status. These issues may be affecting their wine consumption behaviours, particularly related to anomalous behaviours such as mixing red wine with lemonade and the rationale for the preference of cork‐closed wine bottles. Furthermore, the notion of wine consumption for health‐related purposes was uncovered and a linkage found with traditional Chinese medicine.

While research has been conducted on Chinese wine consumers, this paper attempts to uncover the underlying motivations for consumption and finds a linkage between wine consumption and traditional Chinese medicine. Furthermore, this paper links the traditions and beliefs of traditional Chinese medicine with a product category other than food or medicine.

The purpose of this paper is to provide further insight into Chinese wine consumers’ preference, grasp the regional sensory preference differences of China and build up a predictive model for wine consumers’ sensory preferences.

The study involved 3,421 Chinese wine consumers in the survey. Classified statistics were conducted to excavate regional differences of wine consumers’ sensory preferences. By analyzing influencing factors, prediction models for consumers’ sensory attribute preferences were constructed on the basis of multivariate disorder logistic regression method.

Empirical research showed that the wine with the following sensory attributes was the most preferred by Chinese consumers: dry red, refreshing and soft taste, still type, moderate aroma degree and mellow aroma, and sweet wine was also popular. Consumers’ preference varied from region to region. The proposed predicting method of the study realized more than 70 percent accuracy when conducting prediction for color, sweetness, aroma type and flavor preferences.

By shedding light on the latest sensory attribute preferences of Chinese wine consumers, this study will help wine industry participants conduct market segmentation based on the diversification of consumers’ preferences. The wine enterprises can gain guidance from the results to conduct market positioning, adjust strategies and provide specific production for target wine consumers.

Based on the actual situation of Chinese wine market, this study defines sensory attribute indexes of wine from the perspective of wine consumers and presents the most recent comprehensive research on the sensory preferences of Chinese wine consumers through a nationwide survey.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Chinese wine market can be meaningfully segmented and to explore marketing implications for the Australian wine sector.

The research is descriptive in nature, using an online survey to collect quantitative data on wine consumer behaviour. A total of 407 responses were obtained. Data analysis included descriptive analysis (frequency distributions) and cluster analysis.

The research identifies three clusters of wine consumers: “the extrinsic attribute-seeking customers”, “the intrinsic attribute-seeking customers” and “the alcohol level attribute-seeking customers”. These groups of consumers were categorised using a behavioural (benefit) segmentation base.

The use of an internet survey and convenience sample limits generalisation of the findings. The adoption of a behavioural basis in conducting the segmentation is a limitation. The use of more complex segmentation bases, such as psychographics, may yield a richer understanding of the Chinese wine consumer in future studies.

The customer profiles provide Australian wine marketers with an insight into Chinese wine consumer behaviour. Brand positioning can be improved by ensuring that the brand emphasises certain product attributes which the segments value when choosing wine.

Little previous research on market segmentation has been conducted in mainland China. For Australian wine marketers, this study provides a baseline study into market segmentation and may assist with targeting and brand positioning decisions.

The paper seeks to examine Chinese consumers' wine‐purchasing behaviour and, more especially, the importance of country of origin (COO) effects in the evaluation and assessment of wine quality and as it relates to decision making for wine purchases.

The data for this study were collected in 2004 through an interviewer‐administered, structured questionnaire targeted at randomly selected wine buyers in the ChangNing district of Shanghai (China). Chinese consumers tend to purchase wine primarily for sensorial reasons, consuming it on social occasions. Wine has never acquired the connotations of being merely a thirst‐quenching drink as it did in some European countries. They are also attracted to wine for its health benefits.

It was found that Chinese consumers are more likely to use extrinsic cues than intrinsic cues to evaluate wine quality. Thus, COO information is a significantly more important cue than price for Chinese consumers as a quality cue. However, there appears to be no significant difference in the importance of COO and brand in this regard. Wine is a complex product – small differences in any one of a huge range of variables, from the weather, through the grape, the production method, the storage and even the bottling can affect quality. As might be expected in a market that is relatively under‐developed and which has a smaller experience of wine drinking than some other parts of the world, Chinese consumers pay much more attention to COO when they purchase wine for special occasions, where their choice is exposed to the judgment of others. By contrast, when purchasing wine for their own private consumption, COO assumes a lesser importance.

This research can significantly help wine marketers to develop more effective positioning strategies in China. It will also help in the development of pricing and promotional decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore China’s online wine market segmentation on the basis of the wine-related lifestyle (WRL). Moreover, this study can provide further understanding and reference about China’s wine market segmentation research, which is limited at present. This work can be helpful for those who want to do further research in the Chinese wine market. It is good for wine importers wanting to import wine to China to understand the Chinese wine consumers.

Survey data were obtained from a sample of 3,369 participants through cooperation between the College of Enology and the Yesmywine.com website. Questionnaire items included gender, age, area distribution, unit price, bottles consumed, drinking frequency, drinking time, wine-related knowledge, etc. Combined with the influence factors of the WRL, a structural equation model was developed. The data analysis, particularly employing principal component analysis, enabled the identification of five market segments.

Five distinct segments were identified within the wine market and designated as follows: wine official consumption type enthusiastic fancier; enjoyment consumption; fashionable consumption; and new, young wine drinkers.

The research data were derived from Yesmywine, one of the largest online wine sale platforms. However, the impact of yesmywine is much smaller compared with Tmall and Taobao and Jingdong. In this paper, we can see that WRL is increasingly becoming a part of Chinese people’s daily lives, especially for the enthusiastic and fancier wine consumers, which is the official type of wine consumer. Next, an analysis of time series under the data of the near future years should be conducted to find the online wine segmentation market variation trend. Moreover, it is important to conduct cross-culture comparison between the Chinese and Australians. Brand positioning can be improved by better understanding China’s online wine market segmentation.

WRL segmentation is valuable for the wine importers and producers in west France, Italian, Germany and so on, as they want to develop China’s wine market and understand the mindset of Chinese wine consumers. The wine importers in China should focus more on consumers that enjoy wine along with newer and younger wine drinkers.

This paper analyzes a large sample (3,369) and therefore is useful for understanding online wine market segmentation and wine consumption behavior in China owing to China’s limited wine market segmentation literature. This paper is the first to use WRL tool to segment China’s online wine market. Moreover, the research data have reference value for those who want to learn more about China’s online wine market, as yesmywine is one of the largest online wine-sale platforms. It also gives some managerial implications for wineries and wine marketers that will be helpful to wine companies in understanding the emerging Chinese wine market and in enacting wine marketing strategies more effectively.