Simone Mueller

Is there more information in best‐worst choice data?

Best Worst Scaling (BWS) has been shown to be a powerful method for preference and attribute importance measurement and is already widely established in wine marketing to analyse what drives wine consumers’ purchase decisions. Most prior BWS studies utilised Best Worst scores on an aggregated level only to measure relative attribute importance for the total sample or used sociodemographic or wine behaviour related variables to describe apriori segments. Not many studies considered individual differences in the Best Worst scores to find post hoc segments based on revealed differences of attribute importance. Is there more information contained in Best-Worst data than has been considered to approach this problem? We exemplify for data of British on-premise wine purchase behaviour how considering the attribute variance-covariance matrix allows valuable insights into what drives consumer heterogeneity. Attributes with high variance signal respondents’ disagreement on their importance and indicate the existence of distinctive consumer segments. Attributes jointly driving those segments can be identified by a high covariance. Based on the variancecovariance matrix we identify five dimensions of utility with a principal component analysis which show to be a very efficient tool for an effective interpretation of behavioural drivers of clusters derived by latent clustering. Our analysis opens new doors for marketing research to a more insightful interpretation of BWS data. This information gives marketing managers powerful advice on which attributes they have to focus to target different consumer segments.

How Strong and Generalisable is the Generation Y Effect? A Cross-Cultural Study for Wine

Purpose – This study aims to investigate how strongly Generation Y consumers differ in their values, attitudes and wine and alcoholic beverage consumption behaviour from older generations. The comparison spans seven culturally different markets. Design/methodology/approach – Large representative samples totalling 11,622 wine consumers responded to a standardised survey. A factorial analysis of variance was used to determine the main and interaction effects of markets and generations. Findings – Although significant differences were found between generations, their explained variance is very low. There were significant trans-cultural similarities in generational differences for values and wine consumption behaviour: Gen-Y is more oriented towards hedonic success and status and less towards social values; Gen-Y is more likely to consume white and rose´ than red wine and is most promiscuous in its alcoholic beverage consumption. A number of noticeable differences appeared between countries: wine involvement and consumption increases with age in traditional European wine markets, while they decrease in North America; environmental concerns and purchase channel usage hardly differ between generations but vary strongly between markets. Originality/value – This is the first study to quantify the effect size of generational differences using large representative samples across countries with different cultural backgrounds, including traditional and established wine consumption nations.

Pricing for new product development

Abstract: Three different methods for setting the retail price for newly developed products are discussed in this chapter: heuristic, rule-of-thumb or competitive comparison method; hedonic price analysis; and discrete choice analysis. Each method is discussed with the help of an applied example to make the reader aware of the issues involved with it and strengths and weaknesses for their use are highlighted.