Do we judge a wine by its label?
Yes, and new research counts the ways.
The results shed light not only on consumers' snap shopping judgments, but also on marketing opportunities for other consumer products, including fragrances, footwear and MP3 players.
"There's a lot of money to be made in helping consumers make a good choice," said Keven Malkewitz, an assistant marketing professor at Oregon State University who coauthored the study. "The package helps people make a decision."
The study, "Holistic Package Design and Consumer Brand Impressions," appeared this month in the Journal of Marketing, cowritten by Ulrich Orth, a marketing professor at the University of Kiel in Germany. It was funded in part by Willamette Valley Vineyards Inc. in Turner, Ore.
Past marketing research suggests that packaging is extremely important in selling products because consumers encounter them when they're highly engaged mentally in making buying decisions. But little independent research had been done on which designs evoke specific, desired responses, Malkewitz said.
To figure that out, Malkewitz and Orth photographed 160 wine bottles, mostly of less-recognized brands. They asked 125 graphic and industrial designers to analyze the aesthetic attributes of each bottle. Then they sorted responses into five primary design types: bold, contrasting, natural, delicate and nondescript.
Next, researchers showed photos of the bottles to 268 consumers in Oregon. They asked 15 questions about each bottle's "brand personality," including whether the brands seemed sincere, exciting, competent, sophisticated or even rugged.
The results? Consumers found bold packaging (Dundee's Wine by Joe was an example) and contrasting designs (the label on Australia's Yellow Tail) to be exciting and eye-catching. But they also expected them to be lower in quality and sophistication, and less expensive, the study found. Additionally, wines with highly contrasting designs were thought to be rugged.
Natural designs -- such as Washington state's Chateau Ste. Michelle -- were thought to be sincere, competent and sophisticated wines, but not especially exciting. Consumers also expected these wines to be expensive but of high quality and a good value.
Delicate designs -- Italy's Travaglini, for example -- also scored high on competence and sophistication and were expected to be of high quality, classy and expensive. Consumers found nondescript designs -- California's Fusee -- insincere, and believed they were corporate and of little value for the money.
Malkewitz said the results showed some wineries -- for example, Yellow Tail with its colorful kangaroo set against a black backdrop -- have successfully aligned their packaging with their content and pricing, sending a clear message.
"Yellow Tail is accurately signaling who they are and what they do with their packaging," said Malkewitz, a former marketing executive at Adidas AG.
Wine by Joe, however, might be slightly off-point, he said. "The bottle is screaming, 'I'm not very expensive. I'm not very competent,' " Malkewitz said, noting that the wine is more expensive than Yellow Tail and other mass-marketed wines.
Wine by Joe founder Joe Dobbes, a 22-year winemaking veteran, said he designed his five-year-old label almost tongue in cheek. His target: Generation Xers who want an approachable but good-tasting wine to drink during the week, at wedding receptions and "maybe funerals."
"I'd say, 'Don't let the label fool you,' " he said. "Really, it's only a beverage. ... Don't get too caught up in it."
In four Pacific Northwest supermarket chains -- Safeway, Albertson's, Fred Meyer and QFC -- Wine by Joe's $18 Pinot Noir is the ninth-most popular pinot and the fastest-growing in sales, said Jessica Villagrana, company vice president of marketing.
But sales are slower in "Ivy League states," Dobbes said, and distributors there have complained the label turns off consumers. "They're a little more uppity there," he added.
Malkewitz said the research should provide marketers and managers guidance for how to talk to designers and how to evoke consumer responses to their products. Appealing package designs might prompt consumers to pay higher prices for that product, he said.
Dobbes, for his part, has no plans to change Wine by Joe's label. He'll just continue to taste-test his wine in stores and enter it in contests.
"One of my mantras," he said, "is drink the wine, not the label."
