Consumer responses to wine bottle back labels

This paper reports on an exploratory study of consumer responses to the information contained on wine bottle back labels. It was based on research conducted with respondents in Australia in early 1999. Its central findings were: (1) that experienced consumers have difficulty in matching the tastes of wines with their back label descriptions; (2) that 57% of the respondents claim regularly to read back labels in making their purchasing decisions; (3) that the information they found most useful in helping them to identify the wines was simple descriptions of the tastes or smells of the wines; and (4) that it is difficult to draw general conclusions about the effects of gender, age, income or occupation on such responses.