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This research aims to explore whether quality signals, such as grape variety names explicitly used by “quality wines produced in specified regions”, affect wine retail prices in different ways in large‐scale retail and specialised shops.

Tocai wine, which is produced in Northeastern Italian regions and is involved in a dispute with the Hungarian geographical indication Tokaj, is taken as a case study. A hedonic price model has been estimated based on retail prices observed in local markets.

The research shows that consumers buying at large‐scale retailers are willing to pay a higher price premium for quality signals than those buying in specialised shops, ceteris paribus. For the latter, willingness to pay for quality signals is reduced by the information provided by the specialised shop retailer, which decreases the customer's uncertainty about wine quality; quality signals appearing on wine labels generally have a more relevant positive effect on wine price than brand reputation, confirming the findings available in the current literature.

This paper contributes to the literature by proving, in a real market situation, that consumers are willing to pay a higher price premium for quality signals when information is supplied only by wine labels, as in a large‐scale retail environment, than when it is provided by the assistance of a knowledgeable seller, as in specialised shops. The paper confirms that the information transmitted to the consumer during purchase affects price in a way similar to that reported in the literature for simulated markets in the case of expert consumers.

This research compared wine quality evaluations by wine consumers and wine wholesalers for the same Chardonnay wine at three price levels and four different oak levels. Consumers judged wines mainly by price, regardless of the oak level. Wholesale sales people ignored the prices and judged the wines by the oak level. Wholesalers predicted that consumers would respond based on the wholeaslers' quality judgments, and were unable to accurately predict the consumers' responses. Better targeting of consumers and better training of the wholesale representatives is recommended.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of wine involvement in moderating the effect of winery service quality on loyalty toward small family wineries.

This study used a structured questionnaire. The survey was distributed to wine tourists who visited small family wineries located in Crete, Greece and a total of 216 usable questionnaires were collected for the study. To analyze the data, the study used partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that wine involvement moderates the effects of winery service quality on wine tourists’ loyalty. Specifically, staff behavior affects the loyalty toward wine tourists with low involvement more significantly compared to the wine tourists with high wine involvement. On the other hand, the quality of wine tastings affects the loyalty of wine tourists with high wine involvement more significantly in contrast with the wine tourists with low wine involvement.

Findings suggest that winery operators need to take into consideration wine involvement among wine tourists when they develop a winery service strategy. Operators of small family wineries can provide more customized, diverse and quality wine tastings to wine tourists with high wine involvement while prioritizing winery staff’s behavior and hospitality to those wine tourists with low wine involvement.

This study contributes to extant wine tourism literature by adding the effects of wine involvement on wine tourists’ loyalty toward the winery, and particularly focusing on small, family wineries.

Given the intensified competitiveness in the wine retail industry, partnering with quality suppliers becomes critical to ensure a steady supply of high-quality products and sustainable business growth. This study aims to explore how wine supplier quality attributes impact wine retail businesses and if such effects differ depending on wine retail types.

Data were obtained from wine purchasing managers in Korea. To validate the proposed relationships, structural equation modeling was used. A multigroup analysis was conducted to test distinct roles of on/off-premise wine retail types within this research framework.

Results support the significance of supplier quality attributes in shaping the landscape of wine retail businesses. Operational and strategic benefits exhibited a positive effect on both financial performance and suppliers’ relationship satisfaction, thereby improving the intent to continue working with suppliers. This study revealed noteworthy distinctions in the effects of supplier quality attributes on operational and strategic benefits between on-premise and off-premise wine retailers.

Findings provide valuable insights to wine suppliers and buyers concerning the establishment of a mutually beneficial long-term interdependent relationship. The approach sheds light on the unique dynamics of wine retail types, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the distinct roles of supplier quality attributes on on-premise and off-premise retailers.

This study developed an integrative framework, emphasizing the importance of supplier quality attributes in the wine retail industry. This model offers valuable insights into creating favorable buyer–supplier relationships that result in mutual benefits for both wine retailers and suppliers.

The climate in Mendoza is significantly different from the climate in most global wine-making regions. This paper aims to explore the relationship between the quality of the Malbec wine from the Mendoza region and its weather.

This study uses a multivariate regression model with fixed effects to assess how weather variations relate to wine quality. The Wine Spectator ratings are used as a measure of wine quality and to build a longitudinal data set of Malbec wine ratings from 1995 to 2020. The weather is described with several variables based on temperature, rainfall, humidity and cloudiness data from the Mendoza region. The model controls for wineries which are treated as fixed effects.

The results of this study indicate that the weather has a modest explanatory power when it comes to the quality of Mendoza’s Malbec. Additionally, the analyses show that the wineries are more important than the weather to explain quality differences in the wines. These findings are in agreement with previous studies carried out in regions with stable weather such as California and Australia.

The quality of Mendoza’s Malbec depends more on the winery of origin than the year-to-year weather variations. Therefore, consumers should focus more on the winery and less on the vintage when making purchasing decisions. Additionally, given the relevance of the winery in relation to quality, the findings of this study indicate that future research efforts should focus on directly linking the wine ratings to quality-drivers behind the winery effects.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the relationship between wine quality assessed through wine ratings and the weather in the Mendoza (Argentina) region. Most such studies have been done in connection with northern hemisphere wines.

Eastern European countries have an important history of quality and tradition in winemaking. The radical economic modification that the wine sector had to face during communism exposed these countries to various problems during transition, when their market share in Western European markets shrunk. This paper aims to argue that an important cause of the decline is the inability of price to convey information about the quality level of the wine, as from the theory of asymmetric information.

This paper uses the econometric theory of hedonic pricing to explore the research question, relating price to the characteristics of the wine, including a quality rating from a respected British wine expert for the year 2006. Results are presented for a sample of 134 wines coming from different Eastern European countries (EEC) sold in the UK. The analysis also tackles the issue of understanding which parameters contributed to the quality level of Eastern European wines, modelling the qualitative description in order to identify the keywords that explains the change in quality level.

The results show evidence of no correlation between ratings and price in the considered segment of the UK wine market, suggesting an imperfect communication of quality via the price information. Moreover, Romania, which is a very important producing country, has a weak brand value, suggesting the need for restructuring the industry and improving quality management schemes to compete in their newly enlarged destination market. The quality model shows that fruity flavours are those playing a most important role in defining the quality level; hence a more targeted product supply should be encouraged.

No previous research has used hedonic modelling to the case of Eastern European wines. Furthermore, the context used here is to understand the weaknesses of the specific segment, and the tool is used to investigate the loss of competitive advantage of Eastern European products in the UK markets, focusing on the quality/price relation.

The purpose is to evaluate the effect of positive and negative traditional word-of-mouth (PWOM and NWOM) on price-based quality perceptions of middle-range wine (price comprised between US$4 and US$12), considering the moderator role of type of relationship between source and receiver –in terms of the strength-of-tie – and the wine expertise of the source.

A between-subjects experimental design was employed to test the hypotheses. The dependent variable, perceived quality, was analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent samples t-tests.

(1) WOM significantly affects price-based wine quality perceptions only when the source is perceived as expert, and independently on the type of relationship between source and receiver. (2) WOM has no “additive effect” on price-based quality perceptions for all but one condition (PWOM about high-priced wine from a close and expert source). (3) WOM results more useful than price to assess quality mainly in “contradictory” situations.

The main limitation is related to the fact that is an experiment, specifically the manipulation of strength-of-tie and source expertise. Although manipulation checks show good results for the procedure, future research should try to design better ways to manipulate these variables, or different procedures to capture similar data.

Managerial efforts aimed to the encouragement of PWOM will be more efficient in markets with a high proportion of experts. Also, the marketing strategy of stimulating PWOM would be more effective for wines in the low-price category.

This study contributes to understand the impact of WOM on wine quality perceptions by examining if WOM affects priors price-based quality perceptions. In particular, we determine if price-based quality perceptions are able to be modified by PWOM and NWOM, a “competing” approach that is novel within the wine literature in which price is usually the most used cue to elaborate quality perceptions.

This paper seeks to investigate the conceptualisation and measurement of the service quality construct and its relationship to behavioural intention through an application of the importance‐performance technique within the Australian wine tourism industry. Many winery operators invite customers to their winery and the quality of service during the visit can impact on future wine sales. Research undertaken among a sample of visitors to Australian vineyards showed that service process factors were more closely linked to wine purchase than tangible elements. The study also provides further support for the use of importance‐performance models of service quality, as this measure was found to be significantly related to two dimensions of behavioural intention.

This study aims to provide insights on how different sources of information concerning a quality assurance program (QAP) influence consumers’ wine purchase likelihood, profiles of consumers most likely to use QAPs (demographics, wine consumption and expenditures, wine involvement behaviors) and consumer attitudes toward QAPs.

Data are from a 2021 survey of 1,191 wine consumers in Tennessee and other US states. A multiple indicators multiple causes model is used to estimate how consumer demographics, wine consumption and expenditure patterns and several wine-involvement measures influence likelihood of using QAPs from eight provider sources when making wine purchase decisions. Sources include university, government, third-party certifiers, wineries and wine associations at the state, regional, national and international levels.

Wine consumers have an interest in QAP information when making wine purchase decisions. Not all QAP provider information is used equally, with almost 69% of the sample indicating the use of state wine association QAPs, but less than 44% indicating the use of government agency QAPs or third-party QAPs. Wine consumers’ demographics also influence the use of QAP information. Males, higher income consumers, residing outside of Tennessee and more wine-involved consumers are more likely to use QAPs. Consumers view QAPs as indicators of overall wine quality, ingredient quality and wine consistency rather than necessarily a means of building knowledge about local wines.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine not only QAP use from multiple providers but also how demographics, wine consumption, wine expenditures and wine-involvement impact QAP use.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether or not the reputation of a region/country in the international wine market depends on a region/country’s efforts to specialize in a specific grape variety.

Data on 19,959 bottles of wine corresponding to six vintages across ten wine producing regions worldwide are used to estimate a hedonic price model that measures consumer valuations of the different wine attributes.

The results of this study show that although variety specialization has successfully underpinned the reputation of some New World regions, such as the Napa Valley (with its Cabernet Sauvignon) or Oregon (with its Pinot Noir); in others, such as Australia (with its Shiraz), this has not been successful.

Over the last ten years, the exponential growth of Australian bulk wine exports has seriously harmed the reputation of Australian wine. With respect to the Napa Valley wines, price discount received by Australian wines increases between the 1997 and 2007 vintage from 33 to 61 percent. Thus, in order to successfully build a collective reputation of an entrant (New World) country, an institutional framework that mediates differences of interest between the large and small vineyards and, above all, that regulates the free-rider problem in the wine market is required.

This paper empirically illustrates how cooperative (and non-cooperative) behavior between firms can help to build (and to destroy) collective reputation of wines that come from the same region or country.

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar si los esfuerzos de una región/país por especializarse en la producción de una misma variedad de cepa sirven o no para construir la reputación de una región/país en el mercado internacional del vino.

Se utiliza un modelo econométrico de precios hedónicos sobre la base de 19.959 mil observaciones provenientes de 6 cosechas y 10 zonas productoras de vino del mundo.

Los resultados de este estudio muestran que aunque la especialización por cepa ha impulsado la reputación de algunas regiones del Nuevo Mundo, como la del Valle de Napa (con su Cabernet Sauvignon) o la de Oregon (con su Pinot Noir); en otras, como la de Australia (con su Shiraz), no ha sido una estrategia exitosa.

En los últimos diez años, el crecimiento exponencial de las exportaciones de vino a granel australiano ha dañado seriamente la reputación del vino de dicho país. Respecto a los vinos de Napa, el castigo de precios de los vinos australianos ha crecido desde un 33% en la cosecha 1997 a un 61% en la cosecha 2007. Así, si se desea construir con éxito la reputación de un país entrante (del Nuevo Mundo) al mercado mundial del vino, se requiere de un marco institucional que medie las diferencias de interés entre las grandes y pequeñas viñas, y que, por sobre todo, regule las conductas no cooperativas (free-rider) que surgen al amparo de la reputación colectiva asociada a los vinos que provienen de una misma región o país de origen.

Este paper ilustra de manera empírica cómo las conductas cooperativas (y no cooperativas) entre productores pueden ayudar a construir (y a destruir) la reputación colectiva de los vinos que provienen de una misma región o país.