Wine Consumer Behavior

WINE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR: AN IRISH WINE MARKET ANALYSIS. A LITERATURE REVIEW.

Sarah Geraghty Shannon College of Hotel Management [e-mail]

ABSTRACT

The Irish wine market, worth €1.65 billion in 2009 (DIGI, 2010), has experienced unprecedented growth in the last fifteen years, growing from an 8% share of the overall alcoholic beverage market in Ireland in 1994 (WDB, 2007) to 22% in 2007 (DIGI, 2009). Relative to the long history of wine making and wine drinking, the marketing of wine is in its infancy (Thomas and Pickering, 2003). With approximately 1,451,000 wine drinkers (WDB, 2004) Ireland is an attractive and profitable target market for international wine brands.

This research aims to analyse the consumer behaviour of Irish wine drinkers, to provide marketers with an insight into the purchase choices of consumers. A profile of consumption patterns will provide marketers with valuable pointers on the type of wine preferred and the wine attributes that appeal to Irish wine drinkers. These pointers can inform brand positioning strategies, in particular labelling, advertising and point of sale decisions.

This paper is a literature review of wine consumer behaviour theory as applied to the Irish market. Assael’s 2004 model of consumer behaviour is adapted to a wine consumption context and three areas of influences on behaviour are reviewed; individual influences, decision making process influences and environmental influences. The review identifies patterns in Irish wine consumer behaviour, such as preference among wine consumers for wine from Australia and Chile. Irish consumers have a preference for red wine, particularly shiraz/syrah and Irish wine consumers identify price, style and region of origin as the most important product attributes when choosing wine. While the literature provides valuable insights into Irish consumer behaviour and preferences, there is little understanding of how the wine consumer behaviour

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