Wine as a cultural product: Symbolic capital and price formation in the wine field

Jens Beckert, Jörg Rössel and Patrick Schenk

No 14/2, MPIfG Discussion Paper from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Abstract: Understanding the valuation of goods in markets has become one of the key topics in economic sociology in recent years. Especially in markets for goods that are valued for their aesthetic qualities, the ascription of value appears to be a complex social process because product quality is highly uncertain. The wine market is an extraordinary example because most consumers and even experts are not able to differentiate between wines based on objective sensory characteristics and cannot rank wines in blind tastings according to their price. Our premise is that assessed quality differences cannot be explained by the sensual qualities of the wine. Instead, we explain variations in valuation by social processes in which quality is constructed and contested. To do so we make use of Bourdieu's field theoretical perspective, which is strongly supported in our empirical analysis of the German wine field. It shows that his model of the structure of fields has considerable power in explaining price differentiation between wineries and that the orientation of consumers towards different segments of the field is based on class hierarchy.

Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:142

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