Perceptual evaluation study reveals visual label cues drive perceived naturalness in wine consumers, suggesting category expectations rely heavily on aesthetics.
Key Points
To examine how visual impressions of wine labels influence perceived naturalness and natural wine categorization in the absence of official certification standards.
Evaluated seven wine labels across two studies in Japan, assessing novice consumers in Study 1 and experienced consumers and wine professionals in Study 2.
Conducted participant-level exploratory factor analysis on label impressions in Study 1, subsequently testing the resulting perceptual dimensions using participant-level mixed-effects and wine-level analyses in Study 2.
Exploratory factor analysis identified two dominant perceptual dimensions of wine labels: Classicness and Delicateness.
Perceived naturalness demonstrated a consistent positive association with Delicateness across both novice consumers and wine professionals.
Natural wine categorization was associated with lower Classicness in wine-level analyses, though this relationship was not statistically significant in participant-level mixed-effects models.