Honors Theses and Capstones

Date of Award

Spring 2017

Project Type

Senior Honors Thesis

College or School

PAUL

Department

Hospitality Management

Program or Major

Hospitality Management

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

First Advisor

Nelson Barber

Comments

Purpose – To identify the attributes that are most important to consumer’s selection of new wine, depending on consumers’ age, gender, income, subjective knowledge and objective knowledge of wine. This will help wine marketers improve their marketing efforts to target the right segment of consumers.

Design/Methodology – An online survey was administered through Amazon Mechanical Turk with open-ended, multiple choice, five-point Likert-type scale, and ranking questions. A total of 80 respondents completed the survey that all correctly answered the attention check question to ensure reliable results.

Findings – Results showed that variety was significant between gender, and brand loyalty was significant between gender and generation as males and GenX were more loyal. Also, vintage was more important in new wine selection depending on the subjective wine knowledge of consumers, and price was more important depending on the subjective and objective knowledge of consumers. Both those with higher subjective and objective knowledge found price more significant.

Research Limitations – The respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk may not represent the general wine consumer across every market, and therefore results may not be generalizable. The attitudes acknowledged in the survey may also not be representative of actual wine selection as the correlation between attitudes and behavior is weak. Future research projects could include: analyzing actual purchase data of wine, and studying specifically United States wine consumers.

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