What does your wine label mean to consumers? A semiotic investigation of Bordeaux wine visual codes

The results confirm that semiotic studies can anticipate most of the idea associations that a package's graphic design is likely to produce in consumers' minds. The results also demonstrate that the associations of ideas generated by package designs are stable across gender, generation, and product expertise. More important, semiotics provides an understanding of which visual attributes are likely to produce which idea associations and why. Therefore, a semiotic approach appears to be a reliable tool for managers to use to help them define their package designs according to the brand's meanings they seek to communicate to their clients.