Message In a Wine Bottle

The dramatic increase in wine brands available to consumers during the past decade, as well as consumer interest in discovering new wines, has made packaging a critical element in carving out market share. Walk through just about any wine shop and you'll hear exchanges dissing one wine because of its label, while another finds favor.

Discovering what consumers respond to in wine packaging is the goal of ongoing research by Dr. Keven Malkewitz, an assistant professor of marketing at Oregon State University, and Dr. Ulrich Orth of Germany's Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel.

The research could help wineries devise labels that reach their wine's target market more effectively, while cultivating more accurate expectations among consumers of the wines the labels herald.

A forthcoming report says that an appreciation for design may be as significant as a knowledge of wine when it comes to effective packaging. While wine connoisseurs may not be as prone to judging a wine by its label as less-knowledgeable consumers, a label as well-crafted as the wine it describes will accurately signal the wine's quality to design-savvy shoppers.

Malkewitz and Orth found that consumers form expectations of a wine's price based on visual cues inherent in the package. Wines positioned as premium products may bear ornate images of chateaus, or flowing typography, for example. Complex labels that require "greater mental processing effort" translate into a higher price expectation by the consumer.

On the other hand, a more affordable wine may signal its own value using bold colors and simpler fonts that appeal to design-aware consumers."Our study corroborates findings that aesthetically appealing packages can, per se, represent a source of value to aesthetically conscious consumers, and may even lead them to accept higher prices".