Do upscale restaurant owners use wine lists as a differentiation strategy?

Abstract

The present paper studies various criteria used by upscale restaurant owners to differentiate their restaurants and to define their positioning. In particular, we studied several wine list attributes. Through a cluster analysis and a correspondence factor analysis based on different objective wine list characteristics, we obtain two main differentiated profiles of restaurants according to the relative importance of their wine list in comparison with food menu: wine selection and complementarity. Upscale restaurants need to define their positioning strategy and elaborate their wine lists according to their strategy.