Historical wines

: developing a marketing concept to promote portuguese wines

Abstract

Although Portuguese wine exports have been increasing, national wine consumption has not beenfollowing a similar trend. Not only is there a growing number of new brands and products in themarket, which can difficult consumer choice, but wine itself has been losing market share to otherbeverages, particularly beer. It is then necessary to develop marketing strategies that reduce information asymmetries between domestic wine sellers and buyers and convert wine drinking in act of refined culture and status.This dissertation intends to explore the sales potential of a branding concept centred in thehistorical character of high-quality domestic wines: the Historical Wines of Portugal. To this end, the attributes and benefits that could be associated to wines branded as historical by Portuguese consumers were identified through the performance of semi-structured interviews. These served as input for the design of an on-line questionnaire with a choice-based conjoint task (n=531), which was subsequently implemented to determine the effects of the branding strategy onconsumer demand. Differences in the respondents’ level of category knowledge and involvementwere taken into account during data analysis.Results indicate that the branding of Portuguese wines as historical should be based on theirauthentic character. They also show, however, that this association in wine authenticity differsaccording to the consumers’ level of category knowledge. For instance, region-of-origincertification and firm age appear to be more important for wine novices, whereas productionmethod and firm ownership seem to be more relevant for wine experts. These results confirm the importance of segmenting wine markets based on category knowledge and indicate that theimplementation of the Historical Wines of Portugal concept should lead to an increase in sales volume and value of Portuguese wines in the domestic market.

Date of Award	2011
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Ana Isabel de Almeida Costa (Supervisor)