How Loyal are Italian Consumers to Wine Attributes?

Abstract

The paper focuses on the study of loyalty towards three product attributes for wines sold in the Italian retail sector, through the polarisation index. A product attribute is a characteristic of a product (for example, price), made up of various levels (at least two for each attribute) of that characteristic (for example, <€3; €3–€5; €5–€7; >€7). The main findings highlight that the format proves to be the attribute which generates the highest loyalty level for Italian consumers. It is followed by quality designation and price. In particular, table wines, wines sold below €3 and wines purchased in >1.5 litres formats achieve the highest loyalty values, while foreign wines, wines sold at more than €7 and in <0.75 litres bottles are those that discourage behavioural loyalty the most.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers, whose invaluable comments and advice greatly helped us in improving the paper. All the remaining errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors.

Notes

We refer to all the purchases of Italian and foreign wines with an EAN code made by the AC Nielsen Consumer Panel. These data do not include non-EAN wines and the following categories: champagne, marsala, sherry, port, grape must, wine based aromatised beverages, sangria, aromatised wines, natural sparkling wines, fortified wines, and the spumante category.