Understanding Sparkling Wine Consumers and Purchase Cues: A Wine Involvement Perspective

Abstract

Research on sparkling wine (SW) consumers, their market segmentation, and how they use purchase cues is relatively sparse compared to that for table wine, despite the substantial growth in sparkling wine in recent years. We address these gaps and particularly how the importance of SW purchase cues varies with wine involvement in an online survey of SW consumers from Ontario, Canada (n = 1011). Thirty intrinsic and extrinsic purchase cues were rated for importance (n = 609), and wine involvement was determined using the shortened version of the wine involvement scale. Overall, consumers rated (in descending order) price, flavour, quality, country, and sweetness level as the most important purchase cues, whereas several extrinsic factors, including bottle colour and shape, awards won, and vintage were of low importance. Females were 1.4 times more likely than males to cite target end use as the most important purchase cue. We further show that SW consumers can be segmented into three wine involvement categories (low, medium, high) which vary across multiple demographic, consumption, knowledge, and preference measures (n = 1003). Notably, the importance of six purchase cue categories (manufacture, price, endorsements, parentage, prestige/reputation, and place) varied with wine involvement (n = 609). These findings provide timely guidance for marketers and retailers seeking to align their products and communications with the needs and perceptions of SW consumers.