Are Australian wine consumers becoming more environmentally conscious? Robustness of latent preference segments over time

Abstract

Environmental concerns have gained increasing general media attention and a number of producers seized this opportunity by marketing their products with environmental claims. It is still unknown to which degree consumers reacted to the intensified environmental debate by changing their preferences towards eco-friendly products. In this study, we replicate a choice experiment by Remaud et al. (2008) in order to assess the extent to which Australian wine consumers' preferences for organic and environmentally friendly claims have changed between 2007 and 2009. The replication of the same experiment also allows us to test the stability of latent preference segments over time. Between 2007 and 2009 we found Australian wine consumers generally increased their attention to region of origin and became less price sensitive when purchasing wine for a special occasion. This finding is also supported by AC Nielsen scanner data. While the environmental claim has the same importance (5%) for choice over all consumers, its influence strongly increased for one environmental sensitive segment. Surprisingly, we can also identify a segment where consumers seem to be 'eco-allergic', with a considerable negative utility from environmental claims. The replication of the choice experiment drawing a sample from the same wine consumer population, generated a remarkable stable market segmentation that is derived from differences in consumer choices. The robustness of this choice segmentation is an indication of stable underlying preference segments that can be uncovered with scale extended latent class choice models.

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