The importance of wine attributes for purchase decisions: A study of Italian consumers’ perception

The importance of extrinsic and intrinsic attributes of wine for purchase decisions is the object of a lively debate. As a matter of fact, in recent decades, the shift of consumption motivations from nutritional purposes to drinking for pleasure has caused a persistent decrease in the overall demand. However, the increasing number of product varieties and brands of domestic and imported wine, as well as the increased diversity in wine styles and prices, make the identification of wine purchase drivers difficult. This article investigates the importance of product attributes for Italian consumers when choosing wine. Specifically, a class of statistical models for ordinal data, namely CUB, is taken into consideration. This type of model allows the comparison and clustering of the rating distributions that consumers express about wine features and the detection of significant similarities and differences. In addition, this technique generally helps to relate the subject’s preferences to covariates which typically summarize the socio-demographic profile, the purchase and consumption behavior.

Highlight
► The importance that Italian consumers give to wine attributes is investigated.
► CUB models are applied to model consumer preferences.
► A clustering technique for comparing CUB models is discussed.
► Importance of wine attributes depends on expertise, purchase place and consumption occasions.
► Attributes are ranked according to uncertainty and feelings associated to consumers’ judgments.