French wine buyers’ expectations of an environmentally friendly wine

ABSTRACT

Previous research on wine consumers’ attitudes, perceptions, and purchasing behavior regarding environmentally friendly wines has confirmed that consumers are interested in this type of wine but, have little awareness of environmental wine practices and certifications. To address this, the most common solution proposed has been to improve communication with consumers on this topic. However, few studies have questioned consumers about their expectations of environmentally friendly wines. Therefore, the objective of this study was to explore wine buyers’ expectations of a wine that would be respectful of the environment. A second objective was to identify the respondent’s characteristics influencing their expectations. A textual analysis was conducted with respondents’ answers. A Reinert descendent classification, using Iramuteq software, distributed these responses into ten clusters. The term ‘respectful of the environment proved to be polysemic. Wine buyers imagined that an environmentally friendly wine would respect the health of both people and the environment, be ethically produced, and be accessible from a price point of view. Some respondents also mentioned hedonic characteristics.

Highlights

• A lexical analysis identified ten clusters of topics mentioned by wine buyers.

• The term environment proved to be polysemic.

• Respondents expected a wine that would be ecofriendly, ethic, healthy, local and made with a limited use of inputs and additives.

• The age, the degree of involvement in wine and environmental issues and the use of an environmental label as a buying criterion, influenced wine buyers’ expectations.

• Non-wine consumers or respondents less involved in wine and in the environment, were more associated with a cluster regarding wine hedonic characteristics and price.

KEYWORDS:

• wine buyers
• expectations
• sustainable wine
• lexical analysis

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant for D. Ugalde from the French Agency for the Ecological Transition (ADEME) and the region Pays de la Loire.

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of project AVATEC, which was financed by the European Regional Development Fund’s FEDER-FSE 2014–2020 Program (Pays de la Loire region; Grant Agreement PL0015393).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Credit Author Statement

Ugalde Diana: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing-original draft.

Rouiaï Nashidil: conceptualization, validation, writing-review.

Symoneaux Ronan: conceptualization, validation, formal analysis, writing-review, supervision.

Notes

1 The HVE is a French public system of environmental certification of farms which has three levels. The first two levels each have specifications in the form of obligations to be implemented by the farmer. The third level requires obligations of results measured by environmental performance indicators. This level attests to the high level of biodiversity and the very low use of inputs on the farms. The achievement of this level allows to display the HVE logo (Ministère de l’agriculture et de l’alimentation, 2021).

2 Terra Vitis is a voluntary private approach, specific to wine, recognized by the French state and controlled by independent organizations. It certifies the exploitation and the product. It is based on an integrated and reasoned agriculture (Belis-Bergouignan & Cazals, 2006).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ADEME: [Grant Number PL0015393]; Conseil Régional des Pays de la Loire: [Grant Number PL0015393]; European Regional Development Fund: [Grant Number PL0015393].