Research Note - Wine Journalism - Marketing or Consumers' Guide?

This article explores some aspects of wine journalism in Norwegian newspapers. Two issues are discussed: First, are wine sales influenced by wine journalists' reviews? Second, do experts agree on what makes a good wine buy? The results show that wine sales are indeed significantly influenced by the judgements of wine critics; a 10% rise in newspapers' scores in Norway was accompanied by an average increase of 16%--18% in sales figures for table wines. The effect of wine reviews varied somewhat from newspaper to newspaper. It proved difficult to establish criteria for a good wine buy that are objective and independent of the person making the judgement. The journalists gave no unanimous recommendation of good wine buys to the consumers; the same wine could get good reviews in some papers and might well receive run-of-the-mill reviews in others. However, a majority of the reviewers seemed to agree in the ranking of most of the wines, even if the absolute value of the scores differed.

[1]  Stuart Landon,et al.  Quality Expectations, Reputation, and Price , 1998 .

[2]  M. Boor,et al.  Reliability of Ratings of Movies by Professional Movie Critics , 1990 .

[3]  John G. Lynch,et al.  Wine Online: Search Costs Affect Competition on Price, Quality, and Distribution , 2000 .

[4]  A. d’Astous,et al.  Consumer evaluations of movies on the basis of critics' judgments , 1999 .

[5]  J. Eliashberg,et al.  Demand and Supply Dynamics for Sequentially Released Products in International Markets: The Case of Motion Pictures , 2003 .

[6]  Gianfranco Walsh,et al.  An Investigation into the Factors Determining the Success of Service Innovations: The Case of Motion Pictures , 2001 .

[7]  R. Halvorsen,et al.  The Interpretation of Dummy Variables in Semilogarithmic Equations , 1980 .

[8]  Fred S. Zufryden,et al.  New Film Website Promotion and Box Office Performance , 2000, Journal of Advertising Research.

[9]  M. Boor,et al.  Relationships among Ratings of Motion Pictures by Viewers and Six Professional Movie Critics , 1992 .

[10]  Srinivas K. Reddy,et al.  Exploring the Determinants of Broadway Show Success , 1998 .

[11]  Suman Basuroy,et al.  How Critical are Critical Reviews? The Box Office Effects of Film Critics, Star Power, and Budgets , 2003 .

[12]  E. Hirschman,et al.  The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun , 1982 .

[13]  J. Simonoff,et al.  An Empirical Study of Factors Relating to the Success of Broadway Shows , 2000 .

[14]  Jean-Xavier Guinard,et al.  Consumer Testing of Commercial Lager Beers in Blind Versus Informed Conditions: Relation With Descriptive Analysis and Expert Quality Ratings* , 2000 .

[15]  D. Lehmann,et al.  Reactance to Recommendations: When Unsolicited Advice Yields Contrary Responses , 2004 .

[16]  Donal E. Carlston,et al.  Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. , 1989 .

[17]  M. Holbrook.  Popular Appeal versus Expert Judgments of Motion Pictures , 1999 .

[18]  D. Hosmer,et al.  Applied Logistic Regression , 1991 .

[19]  Steven M. Shugan,et al.  Film Critics: Influencers or Predictors? , 1997 .