Effects of non‐sensory cues on perceived quality: the case of low‐alcohol wine

Josselin Masson (), Philippe Aurier and François d'Hauteville
Additional contact information
Josselin Masson: UMR MOISA - Marchés, Organisations, Institutions et Stratégies d'Acteurs - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - CIHEAM-IAMM - Centre International de Hautes Etudes Agronomiques Méditerranéennes - Institut Agronomique Méditerranéen de Montpellier - CIHEAM - Centre International de Hautes Études Agronomiques Méditerranéennes - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier, Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier
Philippe Aurier: CR2M - CR2M Centre de recherche sur le management et les marchés - UM2 - Université Montpellier 2 - Sciences et Techniques

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Purpose – Part of the steady decline of wine consumption in France might be attributed to a growing criticism of the level of alcohol content of the wines. Recent declarative surveys suggest that consumers consider favourably wines with lower contents of alcohol. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate experimentally the consumers' acceptability of a low-alcohol wine, and to analyse the impact of the "low-alcohol" cue on perceived quality. Design/methodology/approach – Using the literature on expectancy disconfirmation and cognitive categorization, we have set up an experimental design involving blind tasting and full information tasting of three low-alcohol wines and three regular wines on a sample of 73 consumers. Findings – When comparing hedonic scores at blind level, there was no significant difference between low-alcohol wine and regular wine. Expectations created by the "low-alcohol" cue have a negative (but unsignificant) impact on overall evaluation, and individual characteristics have almost no effect on wine evaluation. Research limitations/implications – The small size of the sample group of respondents and the quasi-experimental context with no control group were the major limitations of this study. Originality/value – For the wine marketers, the most interesting result was that reducing the alcohol content to 9 per cent did not seem to result in the product being devalued significantly. The study highlighted the overwhelming effect of the sensory quality of the wine on perceived quality. "Low-alcohol" cue creates a low quality expectation, but has only a small influence on perceived quality.

Keywords: PERCEIVED QUALITY; EXPECTED QUALITY; DISCONFIRMATION; LOW-ALCOHOL WINE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-08-22
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, 2008, 20 (3), pp.215-229. ⟨10.1108/17511060810901037⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02394965

DOI: 10.1108/17511060810901037

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().