Quality signals in wine marketing: the role of exhibition awards

Wine producers have their products evaluated at various wine exhibitions for the purpose of receiving awards that can be displayed on the bottles. This contribution introduces an approach to estimate optimal prices for wine exhibition awards. A case study has been employed in cooperation with a major Czech wine company to investigate the practical usefulness of the method. Estimating the relative importance of selected wine exhibitions as award origins and determining the partial utilities of selected awards (medals) is based on a conjoint experiment. Price equivalents and markups can be derived based on consumer preferences.