Is cellar door an opportunity for bag-in-box? A consumer preferences analysis in the Italian wine market

In Italy, the cellar door activities are being transformed. The local, daily and low involved consumer, purchasing bulk wine, is slowly being replaced by the consumer-tourist. This research focuses on the role of packaging for the consumers who purchases wine from the cellar door, in order to understand the benefits they expects to obtain. It also analyzes how consumption behavior influences the packaging choice. Most marketing studies on wine packaging focus on the glass bottle, on design strategies and on consumer perception. Few studies analyze the consumer perception towards new packaging options. A direct survey through questionnaire was carried out by the consumers-tourists at the cellar door of an Italian winery. Three Logit regression models have been applied, in order to estimate the probability that consumers will buy wine in the three different packaging options: bottle, demijohn and bag-in- box. The results of the regression function for the demijohn confirm that the choice for this packaging is linked to a traditional consumption model and to the local production; for the bottle the role of “Age and Information”, “Wine, Food and Environment”, “Image” emerges. The probability to choose bag-in-box is given by “Image”, “Wine and Outside Meal Effect” and “Intrinsic Attributes of Wine”. This study highlights that there are some development opportunities for the bag-in-box in Italy, given by the increasing consumers attention toward new packaging benefits, and linked to the wineries, that should fill up the consumer information gap and include bag-in-box in an integrated vision of marketing mix.