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This paper examines the attitudes of the New Zealand wine industry towards the proposed New Zealand ‘Registered Origin’ appellation policy. Existing appellations are reviewed, including the motives for their establishment, their performance, and their relationship with the marketing activities of wine producers. The review concludes that existing appellations could be divided into two groups, the ‘active’ appellations of the Old World, and the ‘passive’ appellations of the New World. Passive appellations make assumptions as to industry behaviour. These assumptions are identified. These assumptions have to be both understood and supported by an industry if they are to adequately support a passive appellation policy. An interview survey of New Zealand wine producers examines the industry's understanding of the proposed passive appellation. The results suggest that the level of understanding is low, at around 25% of those interviewed, which has negative implications for the proposed appellation.

Government regulation affects “the economics of what's‐in‐a‐name” in the U.S.A. and Italy, as well as in other nations. The paper briefly explores some of the economic implications of creating viticultural appellations or geographic districts. Among the issues examined are the exclusivity principle, the problem of the commons, the value of governmental approval, and consumer issues. Also, several U.S. anomalies are introduced and discussed. This paper compares the establishment of U.S. viticultural areas with the Italian approach, which was initially private and later developed within the framework of the Italian wine laws. The Italian approach more closely resembles a private arrangement supported by law instead of a cartel.

This paper aims to analyze the significance of British Columbia Vintners Quality Alliance (BC VQA) certification that constitutes BC’s wine appellation and its influence on wine prices, the volume of wine sales and winemakers’ revenues.

A three-stage endogenous dummy variable specification that addresses the endogeneity of the VQA certification is used. The data used in this research come from the BC liquor distribution branch, and it is composed of a monthly scanner wholesales data of all wines sold by the BC estate wineries located in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys of BC in 2011-2015.

The obtained results suggest that VQA certification has a positive and marginally significant effect on the average volume of sales of BC produced wines, but it seems not to influence the average wine prices and the average revenue share. The results imply then that VQA certification allows rent dissipation via over-certification, which, in turn, allows arbitraging away of producers’ rents.

The research constitutes the first attempt of the use of three-stage endogenous dummy variable modeling approach to correct for the endogeneity of the VQA certification in BC. The analysis is essential for BC winemakers as it can inform them about the current role of the VQA certification in BC. This knowledge is especially important now when the BC wine region is developing its collective, regional reputation and is in the process of introduction of new appellations and sub-appellations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market of rosé wines in Italy, to outline retail strategies and to investigate to what extent the price is affected by branding these wines.

A survey has been carried out on retailers by collecting data about wines as intrinsic attributes (grape variety, blending, origin, alcohol content, etc.) and extrinsic attributes (brand, price, packaging, etc.) and about outlet and retail environment. The hedonic analysis required a rearrangement of data survey, while a Box-Cox transformation allowed to control the strong heteroskedasticity detected of the data.

Results provide strategies for still, semi-sparkling and sparkling rosé market segments. Still rosé wines are strongly differentiated, while the price is affected by the appellation, grape variety, blending, brand and outlet features. Two main strategies are suggested: the first focuses on appellations endorsing consumer’s brand loyalty; the second is driven by retailers while involving weaker brands. Different pictures emerged for semi-sparkling and sparkling wines, as producers and retailers tend to follow consumer’s preferences for fresh and easy drinking wines as well as to extend the product assortment.

Results for sparkling rosé wines cannot be generalized. The high fragmentation hinders the hedonic model performance in capturing the price effects of brands, appellations, grape variety and wine blend.

The hedonic analysis provides suggestions for rosé wine producers that should reinforce their brand through associations among intrinsic attributes, such as appellation, and extrinsic ones, such as price, while satisfying retailer requirements.

The paper contributes to the knowledge base about the Italian rosé wine market, which is mostly export-oriented. Model results help to understand why the domestic consumption is stagnant with respect to other countries such as France or the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to explore different levels of place‐based marketing in the form of region of origin strategies used by wineries in their branding efforts. The overall aim is to obtain insights into wine consumer dynamics such as product involvement level, consumption frequency and differences between segments on the basis of gender and age from a regional branding perspective.

Data collection took place by means of a highly‐structured online survey of wine consumers across the USA. The request to participate was directed to legal wine drinking age people of 21 years and older to 9,922 e‐mail boxes that yielded a response rate of 5.7 percent, finally resulting in 570 usable surveys.

Consumers used regional branding cues, information and images in their assessment and valuation of comparative wine labels. Almost without exception, the addition of regional information on a wine label increased consumer confidence in the quality of the product.

Any follow‐on work to the study should also include a broader sampling of consumer types throughout the USA and comparisons made with the study to assess the validity of generalising the results here.

Regional branding efforts should be targeted at high wine product involvement consumers rather than their low involvement counterparts, as high involvement consumers are likely to be more influenced by brand‐based cues.

The paper is of value to academic readers, wine industry practitioners and regional trade and tourism associations and other commercial entities that market their products with regional branding cues.

This paper investigates how giving additional information to consumers changes their appreciation of wine, and how this effect changes with their knowledge of wine and their characteristics.

A survey of 415 French consumers was carried-out in 2014, focusing on the sensory evaluation of 37 red Bourgogne wines. Two sensorial evaluations (visual, and smell & taste) are investigated, first without any information about the wine and then with the presentation of the wine bottle with its labels.

The majority of participants are significantly influenced by the information displayed. The influence of information depends on their initial knowledge and individual characteristics (gender, age, and home area). This influence is robust, whatever be the means of evaluation.

The study was carried out with red Bourgogne wines and focused on the village and regional appellations, with a low and medium price range. The results need a broader investigation to be generalizable.

Information does not have the same influence depending on individual characteristics and on knowledge of wine. Promoting different wines to different consumers who do not have the same knowledge and do not use the same distribution channels is challenging as consumers do not all have the same expectations of red Bourgogne wines. The results provide directions for better targeting consumers through the information on the bottle labels.

By cross-tabulating sensory tastings and knowledge tests, this research contributes to measuring the holistic effect of information on the hedonic appreciation of wine across a significant range of consumers issued from two big cities.

The mere presence of categories, irrespective of their content, positively influences the satisfaction of choosers who are unfamiliar with the choice domains. In the present research the main goal is to analyze how a complex product category is categorized internally by consumers, with and without price information available, and explore the effect of product involvement and category knowledge on such structures within the wine category.

Additive tree analysis allows us to visualize the perceptual structure of complex sets of alternatives and the multinomial logit model enables us to analyze the influence of these inherent personal characteristics.

The results show that consumers organize information on red wines and rosés according to a “type→origin” cognitive construct and use “price”, if available, as a third attribute. Consumers comparing red wines and white wines organize the available information according to a “type” construct in which “price”, even if available, plays no role. Subjects with a greater knowledge of the category exhibit more complex structures.

A broader database would be necessary to draw further conclusions with respect to the specific category of wine. Another possible limitation may arise from the chosen set of alternatives. There are more red wines among the stimuli for the survey. As a result of this numerical imbalance between the red wines on the one hand and the rosé/white wines on the other, the red are perceived to be more similar to each other. It would therefore be useful in future research to try to obtain the same number of alternatives for each attribute level. Meanwhile, research on other product categories would be useful to provide further validation of these findings.

The main implication of the authors' findings for retailers is that an understanding of the internal categorization structures underlying consumers' product similarity judgments will enable them to organize their shelf space layout to match the way it is processed by consumers. Furthermore, the findings suggest that high‐knowledge consumers may be selectively targeted by using store layouts arranged on the basis of complex structures, while low‐knowledge consumers may be selectively targeted using store layouts organized on the basis of simple structures.

The main contribution of this paper to the existing literature on perceptual organization is an analysis of the influence of price on respondents' internal categorization structures, when price is considered a key variable in the formation of consumers' impressions of a product. Furthermore, in the novel context of the wine category, the authors describe the moderating effect of two variables, involvement and knowledge, on the results of previous literature on perceptual organization. These two variables have potential as segmentation criteria to enable category managers to tailor their products to target markets. Secondly, though no less importantly, the authors accompany the qualitative additive tree methodology used to derive the perceived structures with an analysis of variance to achieve a more objective interpretation of the additive trees.

The broad area of the wine industry and the marketing of wine, particularly, are focused on with regard to the changing environment in which wine is made and consumed. The marketing process is described in the context of its application in the wine industry and the environment in which it operates: changing consumption patterns in the industrialised nations, new distribution patterns, and different social and environmental issues. The segmentation of the wine market into two distinct areas, fine wines and beverage wines, each operating independently of the other, is described and the marketing mix factors which the wine marketer can deploy in order to maximise opportunities in these markets are detailed, utilising research into wine consumers' behaviour. The factors detailed are the product, its tangible and intangible benefits; the price — market skimming, market penetration, neutral pricing; the communication mix — word of mouth, journalism, sales promotion, advertising; branding and positioning; ranging, and the distribution channels. It is shown that marketing planning is essential for the winemaker, whether a one‐person boutique winery or a large multinational. The steps to take in preparing a marketing plan are described and guidance is given so that the winemaker can make it happen, both to satisfy consumers' needs and to make a profit.

The purpose of the study is to identify dimensions of wine equity in terms of benefits sought by consumers in wine.

This study examines dimensions of wine region equity, measured in terms of benefits sought by consumers in wine. A survey was conducted in several US states to identify drivers of preferences and to determine relationships that may exist between those drivers, preferences for wine from a number of origins, and consumer lifestyles.

The findings suggest that wine region equity originates in six consumer motivational factors. Quality, price, social acceptance, emotional, environmental value, and humane value were found to be strong and significant predictors of consumer preferences for wine from three US states (California, Oregon, Washington) and six countries (Australia, Chile, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain). Linking those dimensions of region equity to consumer lifestyle, demographic and behavioral variables allows for tailoring marketing communications strategies closely to markets.

Practical applications of this study extend beyond the wine industry and include generalizations for the identification of markets and market segments that react more favorably to specific origins, the identification of equity dimensions to be included in regional umbrella brands, and the identification of lifestyle‐based persuasive communication means and executional cues for specifically targeting selected audiences.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of objective knowledge operationalisation with specific focus on varying levels of scale items’ difficulty. The ultimate goal of the study was to develop a scale to measure objective wine knowledge, which would address the domain of wine knowledge and differentiate varying levels of consumer wine knowledge.

The process of items’ development was guided by recommendations suggested by DeVellis (2003) in his influential work on theory and application of scale development. Examination of items’ performance was conducted through a series of field tests with consumer samples (N = 756) in a US wine region. Item response theory (IRT) approach was applied for items’ testing. The developed items were analysed using the two-parameter logistic model in Mplus Version 5.

The study offers a 44-item test suitable for assessing wine knowledge across a broad spectrum of expertise. For example, if the goal is to assess wine knowledge differences among relatively knowledgeable respondents, a subset of more difficult items could be chosen. Alternatively, a test for novices could be constructed from easier scale’s items.

For researchers, the study offers conceptualisation of the wine knowledge domain, suggests a parsimonious instrument to measure the construct, offers a valid and reliable measure for use in testing theories of consumer knowledge and provides empirical evidence of the value and usefulness of the developed scale.

For professionals, the proposed test may be used to test consumer knowledge and to help assess a prospective employee’s general knowledge of wine. The test can also be given at hospitality programs, outreach and continuing education programs.

The current paper takes an alternative approach to classical test theory and offers an objective wine knowledge scale tested through IRT. This approach avoids shortcomings associated with classical measurement and offers an original scale that can discriminate among respondents with different levels of wine knowledge.