Publicação
Consumer preferences for wine: an application of discrete choice experiments
| Resumo: | The wine industry faces an increasingly competitive environment, and the emergence of new producers and consumers reinforced the global dimension of this market. Despite its traditional nature, this industry is rapidly changing, while wine becomes a particular product linking tradition with innovation. Producers are increasingly searching for new opportunities to differentiate their products, hence understanding consumer preferences is crucial. The present dissertation represents an insightful contribution to understand wine choice and the decisionmaking process, in the international market. Moreover, it addresses important methodological issues related to discrete choice experiments and the underlying assumptions that individuals are rational utility maximizers and they choose their preferred option taking into account all available information. However, increasing evidence shows that people use simplifying heuristics to make choices, supporting the alternative of bounded rational behavior which is likely to increase when the good is complex and unfamiliar. The four articles that constitute this dissertation cover some of the challenges that researchers face when valuing a complex good, such as the one under study - wine, by identifying two critical properties of discrete choice models: (i) consumers heterogeneity, both in the scale and in preference, and (ii) the use of heuristics, namely attribute non-attendance, in two different ways, using stated and inferred approaches. On one hand, results show the importance of accounting for both sources of heterogeneity, while the use of latent class model allows the identification of distinct market segments in terms of preference heterogeneity. On the other hand, it provides evidence of attribute non-attendance both in the stated and inferred approaches, showing biased willingness to pay measures when attribute non-attendance is neglected. However, there is little concordance between the rates of non-attendance, which suggests that respondents stated a higher level of attendance than inferred by the model. Finally, we develop an inferred method in a stepwise approach finding all possible combination patterns between attendance and nonattendance. Results show the potential benefits of using this approach combined with other patterns assuming extreme behavior. The improvements considered in each study lead to a better understanding of consumers’ preferences and the choice process in general, showing the adaptability of choice models and their potential as tools for modelling preferences and conduct welfare analysis. |
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| Autores principais: | Gonçalves, Tânia Cristina do Cima |
| Assunto: | attribute non-attendance consumer preferences decision making discrete choice experiments wine choice escolha de vinho heurísticas preferências do consumidor técnica de escolhas discretas tomada de decisão |
| Ano: | 2020 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | tese de doutoramento |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade do Minho |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho |
| Resumo: | The wine industry faces an increasingly competitive environment, and the emergence of new producers and consumers reinforced the global dimension of this market. Despite its traditional nature, this industry is rapidly changing, while wine becomes a particular product linking tradition with innovation. Producers are increasingly searching for new opportunities to differentiate their products, hence understanding consumer preferences is crucial. The present dissertation represents an insightful contribution to understand wine choice and the decisionmaking process, in the international market. Moreover, it addresses important methodological issues related to discrete choice experiments and the underlying assumptions that individuals are rational utility maximizers and they choose their preferred option taking into account all available information. However, increasing evidence shows that people use simplifying heuristics to make choices, supporting the alternative of bounded rational behavior which is likely to increase when the good is complex and unfamiliar. The four articles that constitute this dissertation cover some of the challenges that researchers face when valuing a complex good, such as the one under study - wine, by identifying two critical properties of discrete choice models: (i) consumers heterogeneity, both in the scale and in preference, and (ii) the use of heuristics, namely attribute non-attendance, in two different ways, using stated and inferred approaches. On one hand, results show the importance of accounting for both sources of heterogeneity, while the use of latent class model allows the identification of distinct market segments in terms of preference heterogeneity. On the other hand, it provides evidence of attribute non-attendance both in the stated and inferred approaches, showing biased willingness to pay measures when attribute non-attendance is neglected. However, there is little concordance between the rates of non-attendance, which suggests that respondents stated a higher level of attendance than inferred by the model. Finally, we develop an inferred method in a stepwise approach finding all possible combination patterns between attendance and nonattendance. Results show the potential benefits of using this approach combined with other patterns assuming extreme behavior. The improvements considered in each study lead to a better understanding of consumers’ preferences and the choice process in general, showing the adaptability of choice models and their potential as tools for modelling preferences and conduct welfare analysis. |
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