Resumen de The effects of mandatory ingredient and nutrition labelling for wineconsumers: A qualitative study
Evelyn Pabst, Gergely Szolnoki, Simone Mueller Loose
Purpose:The purpose of this study is to examine how wine consumers react to ingredient and nutrition labelling. It examines how important thisinformation is to consumers, how it affects their attitudes to wine as a natural product and whether it influences consumer demand for wine.Methodology:A qualitative approach with focus group discussions and an observation of back label usage was utilised to assess consumers’reactions to this new information. Bias from artificial attention to back label information was thereby reduced compared to that found in directquantitative research. Three focus groups, consisting of twenty-one wine-involved participants, were run in three different cities in Germany inSeptember 2017.Findings:Only one-third of consumers who looked at the back label detected new-to-them nutrition or ingredient information. Most consumersoverestimated the caloric value of wine, and nutritional information was largely not perceived as useful. Consumers’first reaction was to beinsecure and confused about ingredient information. Ingredient lists negatively affected the degree to which consumers perceived wine as anatural product. Even though some consumers preferred wines with shorter ingredient lists, most would not exclude a wine when shoppingbecause of labelling that gave nutritional values and ingredients.Practical implications:Nutrition labelling will likely not affect consumers’wine choices, except when it competes for space with moremeaningful back label information such as food pairings and sensory descriptions. There is a niche for wine producers to offer wine with short orno ingredient lists to concerned, high-involved wine consumers. Average or low-involved wine consumers are expected to be less concerned. Theindustry should inform consumers about typical production procedures before ingredient lists are introduced.Limitations:Although the observational qualitative study has high external validity, its results cannot be generalised due to the small non-representative sample involved. Thus, further validation is required
