Effects of non‐sensory cues on perceived quality: the case of low‐alcohol wine

Part of the steady decline of wine consumption in France might be attributed to a growing criticism of the level of alcohol content of the wines. Recent declarative surveys suggest that consumers consider favourably wines with lower contents of alcohol. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate experimentally the consumers' acceptability of a low‐alcohol wine, and to analyse the impact of the “low‐alcohol” cue on perceived quality.

Using the literature on expectancy disconfirmation and cognitive categorization, we have set up an experimental design involving blind tasting and full information tasting of three low‐alcohol wines and three regular wines on a sample of 73 consumers.

When comparing hedonic scores at blind level, there was no significant difference between low‐alcohol wine and regular wine. Expectations created by the “low‐alcohol” cue have a negative (but unsignificant) impact on overall evaluation, and individual characteristics have almost no effect on wine evaluation.

The small size of the sample group of respondents and the quasi‐experimental context with no control group were the major limitations of this study.

For the wine marketers, the most interesting result was that reducing the alcohol content to 9 per cent did not seem to result in the product being devalued significantly. The study highlighted the overwhelming effect of the sensory quality of the wine on perceived quality. “Low‐alcohol” cue creates a low quality expectation, but has only a small influence on perceived quality.