Wine and innovation - Consumer acceptance of new grape varieties and wine packaging

Lucas Nesselhauf

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Wine Industry and Tourism Sensory Analysis and Statistical Methods Consumer Packaging Perceptions and Trends

Abstract

„Wine and Innovation – Consumer Acceptance of New Grape Varieties and Wine Packaging“ Wine has deep roots in the European culture. Therefore, it is not surprising that around 60 percent of the world’s wine production comes from Europe. Nevertheless, only seven percent of the European farmland is used for wine growing. Alarmingly, around 70 percent of all fungicides used in Europe are used for grapes. These figures show that the wine industry needs to find new, innovative solutions to reduce the amount of fungicides used in vineyards. Furthermore, the most prevalent packaging for wine, the glass bottle, is not the most environmentally friendly. Using larger packaging, such as Bag-in-Box, can reduce the amount of carbon emissions for the wine industry. The aim of this dissertation is to identify possible strategies to introduce new grape varieties and wine packaging into the market and enhance consumer acceptance. Therefore, the dissertation is divided in five sections. It begins with an introduction to the topic and a short overview of the following chapters. This leads to the first chapter, the paper “Information and involvement: The influence on the acceptance of innovative wine packaging”. The second chapter presents the paper about the conjoint analysis and the cluster analysis. The next paper contains the paper “The Role of Environmental Information for Wine Innovation Adoption – The Case of Fungus Resistant Grape Varieties”. The dissertation ends with a conclusion and a short outlook for future research. The first paper uses a moderated regression analysis to identify the influence of information on the willingness to adopt a new packaging with regard to the participants’ involvement levels. 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 consumers with low involvement mainly buy wine in supermarkets. The second paper utilizes an OLS regression analysis to examine the factors that influence the effect of information about environmentally friendly production. . The results show that the information increase the purchase probability. The information is particularly relevant for women, young and environmentally aware consumers. Therefore, environmentally aware consumers are a first target group for the diffusion of FRGVs. Moreover, the results show that more involved consumers tend to be more open to buy FRGV wines. The last paper is based on a choice-based conjoint analysis. The analysis was carried out with the hierarchical Bayes algorithm to obtain individual-level part-worth utilities. These individual part-worth utilities are the basis for a cluster analysis to segment the consumers according to their preference structure for environmentally friendly wine. The most important attribute is ‘price’, followed by the ‘familiarity with the grape variety’, the ‘reduction of pesticides’ and of ‘carbon emissions’. The calculated marginal willingness to pay reflects these results. The marginal willingness to pay for a familiar grape variety is 2.91 euros. The value for the 80% reduction of pesticides is 2.71 euros and for the 50% reduction of carbon emissions, it is 1.44 euros. Participants would pay 1 euro more for a wine with organic certification; and only 0.82 euros for the slogan ‘better for the environment’. The three papers show that information about innovations help to foster the adoption of the specific innovation. Depending on the level of involvement or environmentalism, the need and the vehicle of information might differ. Furthermore, consumers are open to products that are produced environmentally friendly and would also pay a certain premium for such products. Additionally, some consumers might give up some of their habits to opt for more environmentally friendly products.