Heavy wine consumption: empirical and theoretical perspectives

A common approach to analysing markets and selecting the most profitable target consumers is to identify and focus on the heavy users. Although this is a widely used practice in food marketing, no general theory describes the characteristics of heavy users of food products. The purpose of this paper is to use data from four empirical studies to test hypotheses about heavy wine users with the objective of developing a comprehensive model of heavy usage. The topics of the surveys were wine attitudes and behaviours. Data came from samples of students and adult US consumers. The findings showed consistently that heavy wine users were more likely to be interested in and involved with wine. When compared with studies of heavy users in other product fields, the beginnings of a general model of heavy usage that focuses on product involvement rather than demographics can be proposed.