Influence Of Consumption Situation And Lifestyle On Consumer Evaluation Of Wine Brand Attributes

In the wine retail sector, the international wine glut and the steady decline of wine consumption within several major wine-consuming nations have encouraged many foreign producers to foray the Chinese market. The supply of foreign wines in China is already huge and the profusion of imported wine has led to the confusion of this immature market. In this high competitive marketplace, marketing wine managers tend to agree that the Chinese wine market need strong brand. Consumers in China are discovering wine as new product and adopting new ways of drinking. Although wine appears to become a''global product'', there are important cultural differences underlying the marketing approaches. Despite the obvious recognition of the great potential of the Chinese market, research in the field of global wine business and marketing has been limited to western countries. While most of the efforts have concentrated on understanding wine consumption behaviour in the"Old World", little research has focused on China and generally on wine emerging countries. As a consequence, knowledge about the wine habits and preferences of Chinese consumers remains relatively limited. In particular, few research efforts have explored the importance of building brand loyalty for this market where consumers are especially brand-driven. Armed with the previous studies done in western countries, this study partly addresses this deficiency and built its own approach on the subject. This study investigates how Chinese consumers evaluate ten wine brand attributes and specifically tries to find out which brand attributes Chinese consumers mainly value according to their lifestyle and consumption situation. The data for this study were self-collected using an online questionnaire. The respondents of the survey were Chinese consumers from five first-tier cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Hangzhou). The choice has been made to focus on Chinese consumers in the big first-tier cities because they are especially brand-conscious and receptive to sophisticated products.In terms of methodology, firstly this research applied paired-samples t-tests to determine whether consumption situations significantly influence the importance attached to the ten wine brand attributes. Secondly, this study used a classical cluster analysis using'Activities Interest and Opinions'(AOIs) inventory items to establish meaningful lifestyle segments. Then multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) to conclude whether lifestyle influence significantly the importance attached to the ten wine brand attributes. Finally multiple comparisons using the Scheffé's method were employed to determine precisely the key attributes which are especially value by each lifestyle segments.Ten wine attributes were identified in this study, five attributes (Alcohol level, Matching food, Grape variety, Flavour, and Sweetness) were related to the product and five other attributes (Label, Brand name, Personality, Reputation and Wine region) were not related to the product. The results of this study indicated that Chinese consumers considered the brand name, the winery reputation and wine region as the most important brand elements. And they globally value more attributes that are not related to the product. This finding validates the statement that Chinese consumers are extremely brand-driven and lack knowledge about imported wines. Another finding from this study is that consumption situations influence importance bestowed to several brand attributes. In accordance with the literature, the Chinese consumers value more the wine region when a wine bottle is purchased as a gift than when it is purchased for one's own consumption. But this study provides further insight by investigating other attributes. In addition of the wine region, it was found that Chinese consumers pay more attention to all the non-related product attributes when a wine bottle is purchased as a gift than when it is purchased for one's own consumption whereas they only pay more attention for two of the product attributes, namely flavour and matching food. This obviously reveals the importance of the"face"notion in Chinese culture as a specific feature of Chinese consumers'behaviours. In a wine purchase situation which involves"losing face"circumstances, regardless to the product characteristics (grape variety, degree of alcohol…), Chinese consumers are likely to opt for a wine of a famous brand, with a worldwide reputation, and from high-rate wine regions which means paying a premium price for a well-known brand of imported wine. Finally, this study confirms that lifestyle influence the importance allocated to brand attributes. Six lifestyle segments were identified with significant difference in the importance attached to brand wine attributes. Then the relative importance of each brand attributes was determined for all the lifestyle segments. Insight into the importance of respective brand attributes enables managers to design and position meaningfully their brand of wine by selecting appropriate attributes for the suitable lifestyle segment. Besides by knowing the lifestyle segments of consumers, appropriate media can be selected to reach a particular audience, such as people watching TV, going to movies or listening to radio.The empirical results of this study are numerous and increase the knowledge about Chinese consumers, it may help foreign wine businesses to market their bottle in this increasingly crowded market.