Editorial

Citation

Bruwer, J. (2015), "Editorial", International Journal of Wine Business Research, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWBR-04-2015-0010

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Wine Business Research, Volume 27, Issue 2

Welcome to the second issue of 2015.

In this issue International Journal of Wine Business Research (IJWBR) presents four timely and highly interesting articles focusing on a variety of wine countries, namely, the USA, Portugal and Australia. These articles make theoretical and applied contributions and fit nicely together to contribute to greater understanding of wine marketing and consumer behaviour in general.

The first, authored by Vigar-Ellis, Pitt and Caruana, examines whether exploratory wine purchasing behaviour is affected by US consumers’ objective and subjective wine knowledge. The three main constructs investigated, namely, exploratory purchasing behaviour (the tendency of a wine consumer to explore or try new wines), subjective knowledge (how much consumers think they know about wine) and objective knowledge (how much a consumer actually knows about wine), exhibited robust psychometric properties. In terms of the respondent demographics (age group, gender, education and wine volume consumption), the results indicate that exploratory purchasing is significantly related to wine consumption, with higher consumption associated with a greater tendency to purchase exploratively. Subjective wine knowledge is also significantly related to wine consumption, with those who consume more, believing that they know more about wine. The objective wine knowledge scale developed in this study, is a useful start that will permit measurement of this construct in future research.

Next, Velikova, Howell and Dodd make a strong methodological contribution by presenting a 44-item objective wine knowledge scale suitable for assessing wine knowledge across a broad spectrum of expertise. Their study, conducted on 756 consumers in the USA, takes an alternative approach to Classical Test Theory and offers an objective wine knowledge scale tested through Item Response Theory. This approach avoids shortcomings associated with classical measurements and offers an original scale that can discriminate among respondents with different levels of wine knowledge. For researchers, the study offers conceptualisation of the wine knowledge domain; suggests a parsimonious instrument to measure the construct; offers a valid and reliable measure for use in testing theories of consumer knowledge; and provides empirical evidence of the value and usefulness of the developed scale.

In the third article, Brochado, Vinhas da Silva and LaPlaca discuss brand awareness of Portuguese green wine brands and brand personality using Aaker’s brand personality framework among 330 wine consumers in Portugal. It was found that top-of-mind green wine brands are marked by clear and distinctive brand personalities, with a small subset of brand personality attributes serving as significant criteria for brand positioning. The results provide evidence that Aaker’s brand personality approach is applicable in this context. However, the findings also revealed that not all of Aaker’s scale dimensions are applicable to wine brand personalities. The dimension of “ruggedness” appears not to apply to green wines, perhaps because “young” wines do not activate this personality dimension. The results confirm the need to evaluate brand personality dimensions that are adapted to the particular sectors they address.

The final article by Galbreath discusses a topic that is currently of much interest to organisation scholars, namely, the place of women in top business roles. IJWBR is pleased to publish this article, as it is the first known large-scale research on women in the wine industry, thus contributing to the on-going debate on gender diversity in top business roles, particularly in the Australian context. Although there is a perception that women in the wine industry are breaking through the so-called glass ceiling with “relative” ease, the findings of this study challenge perceptions of the advancement of women, while enhancing an understanding of the characteristics that might help or hinder their advancement to top roles. With the exception of the marketing role, women are underrepresented relative to predicted representation rates. Regarding regional differences, there is no consistent pattern with respect to where women representation in the roles is higher. The findings also suggest that where there is a woman chief executive officer, women are more likely to be represented in winemaker, viticulturist and marketing roles.

Johan Bruwer, (Editor-in-Chief)