Extrinsic attributes responsible for red wine quality perception: A cross-cultural study between France and Spain

• Extrinsic wine quality representation for Spanish and French consumers is studied.
• Extrinsic quality drivers of wines are studied by a cross-cultural study.
• Country-of-origin of wine is the most important cue for less-involved consumers.
• Consumers’ knowledge, involvement and nationality can predict quality perception.

Understanding quality perception requires focusing both on product proprieties and consumers’ representations. The goal of this study was to access the representations of perceived extrinsic wine quality of consumers from two different wine regions in two European countries with an important wine tradition: La Rioja-RJ-(Spain) and Côtes du Rhône-CdR-(France).Twenty commercial red wines (ten from RJ and ten from CdR) were evaluated in terms of quality by means of a categorization task. Ninety-five French and 93 Spanish consumers had to categorize the 20 wines according to four levels of quality going from very low to very high quality.Three clusters of French and two of Spanish consumers have been identified. Country-of-origin of wine arises as the most important extrinsic cue for less-involved French and Spanish consumers, while more-involved consumers with higher knowledge in wine are able to interpret and use a wider range of cues. Consumers’ knowledge, involvement and nationality appear to be good predictors of quality perception.These results are relevant for the field of sensory analysis in that they help understanding the construction of quality perception. The wine industry can benefit also from these results, especially when exporting wines. This cross-cultural study may help them to develop marketing strategies able to enhance the quality perception of wines and to make use of different extrinsic factors.