Bridging the gap between trade operators and consumers to better understand the U.S. wine market: A simultaneous application of discrete choice experiments

Abstract

This study proposes an approach for bridging the gap between B2B and B2C research by showing how a method commonly used to understand consumer preferences – Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) – can be applied to examine choice drivers in a B2B context. Few studies have analysed consumer choices and, simultaneously, whether trade operators' choices towards the same product match. A DCE was created by combining 11 product attributes important to wine choice. The resulting choice sets were distributed among representative samples of 1,762 U.S. wine consumers and 423 U.S. wine trade operators, who were asked to complete the same task. First, the results show that the product choices of consumers and those made by trade operators across the two separate samples can be quantitatively compared, which only a handful of studies have attempted in the past. Second, a Latent Class Analysis (LCA) affirms the presence of three significantly different segments among both consumers and trade operators. These segments' choices are comparable pairwise by the relative importance respondents assign to the choice drivers. The segments are only marginally significantly different in relation to the socio-demographics of consumers or the business characteristics of trade operators.