Opposites are central to many areas in the fields of Psychology and Linguistics, but they are also fundamental to the technical scales used to describe wine (e.g., the Wine and Spirit Education Trust evaluation scales). The present study explores whether it is useful to refer to opposites in order to model Vietnamese standard (vs. expert) consumers' understanding of the wine descriptors frequently used in Italian texts. Sixtyfour terms used in Product Specifications and popular Italian wine guidebooks to talk about the sensory properties of red and white wines (e.g., Hazy-Viet. Đục; Bright-Viet S ang; Complex-Viet Nhiều hương vị; Immature-Viet Chưa ngấu, etc.) were presented to 300 Vietnamese native speakers. They were asked to select what they considered to be the opposite property. Opposites were easily found by the participants, and, interestingly, they agreed with each other on those which were the most frequently chosen. Thought-provoking similarities and differences were revealed when these finding were compared with those of a twin study involving Italian participants. Practical ApplicationsIn order to ensure effective marketing in the wine industry and to prevent misunderstandings, it is not only important that the dimensions underlying certain terms used by experts (i.e., sommeliers, oenologists, and wine experts) are similar to those understood by nonexperts (i.e., standard consumers), but it is also vital to ascertain whether nonexperts belonging to different cultures understand the same terms in a similar way. The results emerging from the present study suggest that it may be useful to use opposites to describe the sensory properties of wine to Vietnamese standard consumers, just as it is for Italian consumers. The research resulted in a list of terms which are understood in a similar way and another list with those which are understood differently. From an applicative point of view, this may be interesting for the marketing of wine in international contexts. | INTRODUCTIONOpposites have long been central to many areas of knowledge, from the ancient study of Philosophy to contemporary Psychology and Linguistics. In recent research, there is evidence that people have an intuitive understanding of opposites and that they are ubiquitous primal cognitive structures. This comes both from corpora and empirical studies on natural (i.e., nontechnical)
With reference to 64 common descriptors of the sensory properties of wine (e.g., tannic, full‐bodied, etc.), we investigated the extent to which these terms are understood by Australian standard consumers in relation to an opposite property (i.e., as happens in the case of experts). The study also determined how consistently these dimensions were among the group of participants. The results confirmed that the sensorial dimensions relating to wine can be modeled in terms of opposites for standard wine consumers in more than 80% of cases. However, there was a great deal of variability between the properties in terms of the opposites which were elicited indicating that some terms are less open to ambiguity while others are associated with many different opposites. A comparison of the results with those from similar studies with Italian and Vietnamese participants is addressed in the final section. Practical Applications The aim of the study was to replicate previous research conducted with Italian participants, but in this case involving Australian participants, with a view to compare participants from a traditional wine‐producing country with those from a relatively newly established wine‐producing country. A similar study had already been carried out with Vietnamese participants, that is, with consumers from a country with less familiarity with grape wines. The importance of this study rests on the fact that English is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world and, as such, the study represents a relevant evolution of the original research. Opposites seem to be a useful point of reference for standard consumers in all of these countries in terms of their understanding of the terms used to describe wine. This and the fact that there seems to be a certain degree of uncertainty regarding people's understanding of many of these terms indicate that it may be necessary to reconceptualize the sensory dimensions relating to wine. From a practical point of view, this is certainly of interest to wine producers since it can help in the marketing of their products.
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