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The purpose of this paper is to show that consumer education in the form of information can effectively overcome adoption barriers to new and innovative wine packaging. This effectiveness depends on both the degree in packaging innovation and the level of consumer involvement.

The paper is based on an online experiment conducted with a sample of 427 German consumers to analyse the perception of consumers about innovative packaging. The experiment featured three different packaging options: bottles with screw-cap closures, bag-in-box and StackTek®. For each packaging form, a treatment group with additional information about the packaging and a reference group without this information were surveyed. ANOVA and t-tests were carried out to test the hypotheses. A moderated regression analysis was used to examine the effect of involvement in combination with information on intention to buy.

The results revealed that low-involvement consumers react positively to additional information about the benefits of a new packaging. For highly involved consumers, however, the effect of information is not significant. Furthermore, the analysis showed that low-involvement consumers mainly buy wine in supermarkets.

Information about new packaging forms should be presented in places where low-involvement consumers buy wine, such as at supermarkets. These consumers can be influenced by the additional information about the innovative packaging.

The use of a moderated regression analysis in the context of wine packaging and involvement is a first and reveals new and valuable insights.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of wine closure types on the quality perception of wine consumers in a traditional wine market, combined with the willingness to pay for red and white wines in bottles closed with screw caps compared with that for wines in bottles with a cork closure.

An online experiment with 436 Austrian wine consumers was conducted in a two-by-two between-groups design. To assess the quality of Austrian red and white wine, quality indicators such as origin, grape variety, awards, the content of residual sugar, vintage, geographical indication, ageing potential, organic certification, vineyard designation and brand (producer) have been applied. Furthermore, different involvement levels as well as willingness to pay were taken into consideration.

Contrary to earlier findings, results confirm that Austrian consumers do not generally perceive wines (both red and white) in a screw cap bottle to be lower or different in quality from those in a cork-closed bottle. However, consumers expect red and white wines in bottles with a cork closure to be higher in price than wines in bottles with a screw cap. Among established quality indicators, the present analysis shows that price is the strongest cue for quality when it comes to wines and indicates that wines in bottles closed with corks and bearing a higher price tag are considered to be of higher quality.

This research comes with limitations, such as the absence of sensory differences. Moreover, the research design is based exclusively on the description of wines and a limited set of quality indicators and does not involve the actual tasting of wines.

Outcomes suggest that in the strategic positioning of wines, the difference in wine consumers’ quality perceptions between wine bottles with screw caps and cork closures plays a smaller role than anticipated. Findings are relevant for practitioners, particularly in old-world wine markets where cork is still seen as the closure of choice for higher-quality wines.

The results of this survey contribute to understanding consumers of an established old-world wine market and their attitudes towards alternative bottle closure types such as screw caps. It adds new insights to the research stream of the quality perception of wines.