Christine Mauracher

Wine tourism quality perception and customer satisfaction reliability: the Italian Prosecco District

ABSTRACT Recently, we witnessed a growing interest in those tourist experiences that focus on the enhancement and promotion of typical local cultures, in particular related to winemaking traditions. In Italy this evidence is also demonstrated by the emergence of events and tours linked to the promotion of Italian wine. It is therefore necessary to pay particular attention to the degree of satisfaction expressed by visitors with regard to the services currently offered within the framework of their wine tourism experience. The present research applies a study on customer satisfaction in the area of the Prosecco district, in the Veneto Region in Italy. The aim of the paper is to understand, by the use of a mixture model denoted as the Covariate Uniform Binomial Model, whether and to what extent the high degree of quality perceived by respondents depends on factors related to personal experience rather than on the circumstances in which the interviews were conducted. Results show that socio-demographic variables have a great impact on wine tourism behaviour. As a consequence, the possibility of creating segments of consumers based on socio-demographic characteristics and consumer behaviour shows the need to consider different marketing policies to satisfy the different needs of tourists that emerged.

Analysing Wine Demand With Artificial Neural Networks

In this paper we analyse wine demand in Italy with microdata. Instead of estimating a parametric model, we study the demand following a non parametric approach by means of Artificial Neural Networks. The input set includes the usual economic variables (price and income) and some sociodemographic factors that are also shown to be relevant for demand analysis. We compute price elasticities using two different nonparametric procedures. (JEL Classification: C14, C21, Q11, Q13)

Struttura ed evoluzione delle esportazioni italiane di vino da tavola e a denominazione di origine

In the last decades the Italian wine market is experiencing a strong transformation as well as an intense and continuous process of internationalisation. The contribute of Italian wines in the international market is very relevant. In 2005 Italy is the second exporting country: the exports’ value is more than 3 billions dollars, the market share is 18% (Unioncamere, 2007). Wine is one of the most important products of the Italian agrifood trade balance, its incidence is around 15% of Italian agrifood exports (inea, 2005). The intense evolution of the trade reflects the need of different frequency and place to consume the product. At the same time, demand is more and more segmented and open to high quality wine. Given the relevance of the changes in the international trade, the objective is to study, by means of time series analysis methods, structure and dynamics of Italian exports of wine for different product typologies, considering both white and red wines and their classification in table and do wine. The data set (istat/ice) consists of monthly observations of world exports for all kinds of wine relatively to 13 years (January 1996 - December 2007). 13 product categories have been identified for the analysis on the basis of wine typology (vqprd or other wines), colour (white, red or rose) and container (smaller or greater than 2 litres).