Determinants of wine consumption of US consumers: an econometric analysis

Abstract

The U.S. is predicted to be the largest wine consumer by 2008. The driving forces of globalization have significantly altered the competitive landscape of wine industry. While the demand for wine in the U.S. is growing, U.S. wineries continue to lose domestic market share. In order to counter foreign competition as well as grow in this volatile environment, they must evolve by adopting a stronger market orientation. That is, consumers should be at the core of any plan. This shift in orientation requires a solid understanding of consumption behavior of wine drinkers in the U.S. To this end, this paper offers a fresh perspective on the consumption behavior of wine drinkers in the U.S. In this study, we estimate econometrically the determinants of wine consumption. One of the goals of this study is also to provide a roadmap to identify and quantify determinants of wine consumption by employing an econometric procedure called Categorical Regression Estimation for non-numeric response variables. In empirically testing such effects, we used 122 survey responses and found significant positive relationship between knowledge and consumption of wine. Although age and race appear to influence consumption of wine, knowledge remains the most important determinant in wine consumption. The results imply that U.S. wineries need to better educate and connect with consumers by developing compatible positioning strategies and marketing programs that are as informative as entertaining. The results provide further managerial and theoretical implications and directions for future research addressing consumption behavior of drinkers in the U.S.

Wine consumer profiles from producing and importing countries in Europe are different

“…In terms of wine consumption demographic patterns in the US, authors like Martín de Mulas (2009) and Thach (2014) coincide that at the beginning of this century is when, in addition to a married status, feminine gender and a lower age, closer to 21 (the new generations) identify and describe the American consumer. Other authors such as Hussain et al (2006) agree that the wine consumption growth in the US has been significant because of the major consumption of the younger population. Gallego (2014) points out that large consumers continue to have the highest family income.…”

“…There have been only a few rigorous academic studies of wine consumers and the determination, in some extent, of their demographic and socioeconomic profile. Some research has been done referred to wine consumer profiles in the United Kingdom (Ritchie, 2007;Phillips and Wilson, 2016), in Spain (Gil and Sánchez, 1997;De-Magistris et al, 2014), in Italy (Casini et al, 2009b), in France (Summerfield, 2013), in Germany (Szolnoki and Hoffmann, 2014;Wiedmann et al, 2014), in Australia and New Zealand (Bruwer et al, 2002;Johnson and Bruwer, 2003;Thomas and Pickering;Bruwer and Li, 2007), in Argentina (Yvon, 2007), in South Africa (Ndanga et al, 2009), in China (Camillo, 2012), in Chile (Palma et al, 2014), and in the U.S. (Hussain et al, 2006;Villanueva et al, 2015). These papers employ different techniques to understand domestic consumer demographics and provide a description of wine consumer profiles, mainly using psychographic variables and qualitative analysis, and in very few cases, quantitative analysis.…”

Czech wine consumers: maturing with age?

“…Three age groups were defi ned to describe the youngest generation of wine drinkers (aged [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], the middle generation (aged [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and the oldest generation (aged 46 and more). The results from the scale questions were compared between these age groups in order to identify differences in behaviour.…”

“…The importance of each of these factors has been explored in several studies of the Australian and New Zealand wine markets [12], [40], [55], [9], as well as the US wine market [41], [26]. In Europe, there have been consumer-oriented segmentation studies of the Swiss and Irish wine markets [7], [21].…”

The Wine Consumption and Purchase Behavior of College Students: An Investigation in the South of China

“…Hussain's study proved that age, ethnicity and education level have a significant influence on consumers' wine consumption behavior by Regression model [1]. In an increasingly competitive and over-supplied wine market, consumers gain an emotional benefit from drinking wines, which is cultural Identity and social status to younger consumers in comparison to the socialization to the elders [2].…”