The relative importance of sustainability, quality control standards and traceability for wine consumers: a cross-national segmentation

Even with increased consumer awareness of sustainable products, the importance of sustainability is unclear relative to other credence product attributes such as quality control and traceability in wine purchasing. Companies speculate whether their marketing strategies can be standardised across countries to target consumers who value sustainable products. These issues are addressed by measuring the relative importance of sustainability, quality control and traceability compared to four known ?importance? attributes in the context of purchasing wine (taste, region, brand and price promotion) across five countries using Best Worst Scaling. Cross-national segments derived with latent class segmentation show that sustainability has the most diverse differences among the attributes. One segment strongly values sustainable production, providing a potential target for wine companies.