Do consumers value sustainable wine claims? An international comparison

In the last few months, there hasn't been a single week without an article appearing in one of the various wine magazines and wine news telling the story of a winery or a wine region being engaged in a sustainable programme. At the same time, very little is known about consumers' preferences and acceptance of such claims. We aim to fill this gap by presenting preliminary findings of a cross-cultural research project conducted for the French wine association IGP Pays d'Oc. A quantitative survey was conducted in five countries (France, UK, Germany, Canada, US) in December 2009 with a total of 11,312 regular wine consumers. Using a discrete choice experiment with visual shelf simulations, we substantiate the relative importance and monetary value of various sustainable wine claims for all consumers on the different markets. Such an approach provides the opportunity to estimate utilities and willingness to pay for each attribute tested and for each market segment. Preliminary findings at the aggregated level indicate that for two countries sustainable claims are valued as highly as French regions of origin and for one country their importance was even higher. Our findings provide wine producers, marketers and policy makers with valuable insights and present the capabilities of a sophisticated and highly valid research method.