C. Chrea *1, C. Forde 1, S. Smyth1, S. Reverseau 2, C. Delahunty 1, D. N. Cox 3

1) Food Futures Flagship, Food Science Australia, Sydney, Australia
2) Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Agronomie et des Industries Alimentaires, Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine Nancy, France
3) Food Futures Flagship – CSIRO Human Nutrition, Adelaide, Australia


In a retail situation, where a large choice of wine is offered without opportunity for tasting, the information provided on the bottle may have a major impact on consumer choice. A crucial question for the wine industry is to identify the influential factors of wine acceptability to better communicate wine appeal to its consumers. This study aimed at better understanding the extrinsic properties that influence consumer behaviour for Australian wines.

To elicit product attributes, a frequently used method is Kelly’s repertory grid. However, this method can be restrictive as it does not allow the simultaneous presentation of many products. A free sorting task seems more appropriate but does not give a good understanding of the hierarchy of the different attributes. To overcome these limitations, we adopted a binary hierarchical sorting task using a set of 22 actual wine bottles selected for their variability in label information and design. Participants (N=30) were asked to split the set of bottles into two groups. After giving a short description of each of their groups, participants were asked to carry on the division of their groups until they felt the groups could not be divided any further. Multivariate data analyses were used to translate the participants’ answers into two maps: one map for the assessors to measure the inter-individual differences and one map for the products to measure the difference between the products. The importance of the elicited attributes was examined by computing their frequency of citation and their order of occurrence in the hierarchical procedure.

The findings demonstrated the efficacy and ecological validity of the binary hierarchical sorting as a method for attributes elicitation. Based on these findings, a conjoint study was developed that revealed further the relative utility of those attributes as drivers of perceived quality and purchase intent for Australian wines.