Men make up 82% of winemakers: but more than 59% of wine drinkers are women.
That means brands need to think about how their bottles look to women, say researchers from Washington State University, who looked at how women perceive different label designs in a study published recently in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.
Women buyers
Wine labels are the first cue of a wine’s taste, flavor and texture. They can sometimes represent the sole factor in choosing a bottle: nearly 80% of wine consumers say their purchases are based mainly on wine labels.
Images have the biggest impact, over written information or branding.
And there has been a move in recent years away from distinguished, stately labels towards colorful, quaint or more unique labels – sometimes including gender cues in the hope to attract a particular target market.
Gender marketing can generate controversy: given that it's often tied up in social norms and gender stereotypes, which have changed dramatically over the last century. But the researchers say that inadequate attention has been paid to how gender cues may influence consumers’ attitudes toward a product, and even fewer studies focus on women consumers.
The experimental study found that women are more inclined to purchase wine that had labels with feminine gender cues.
That might not be a surprise: but a feminine label also influenced women’s expectations that they would like the wine better.
“When you look at the market segments, women are actually purchasing a lot of wine. They are a large group,” said Ruiying Cai, an assistant professor with WSU’s Carson College of Business and lead author of the paper. “We found that feminine cues speak to women consumers. They have more favorable attitudes toward the label and the wine itself. They were also expecting their overall sensory experience to be better, and they were more likely to purchase the wine.”
Test 1: Cute kitty cats vs wolves and stags
In an experiment involving 90 women, participants considered wine labels with rugged animals such as wolves and stags or with portraits of men as more masculine.
In contrast, they designated labels with cute animals, flowers and female portraits as being feminine.
Bunches of grapes - perhaps the most common imagery used on wine bottles - were seen as neutral, as were images of castles.
Test 2: Gender cues vs knowledge
A second experiment showed fictitious wine labels with gendered cues to 324 women.
The participants showed higher intention to buy wines with a feminine label, such as a woman holding flowers, as opposed to a wine with a masculine label, such as a bulldog in a spiked collar.
When asked about the expected sensory experience, they rated their liking of every sensory aspect higher, including the color, taste, aroma and aftertaste.
What surprised researchers was that even knowledgable wine drinkers were influenced by the cues.
“Whether they were knowledgeable or less knowledgeable about wine, when they saw those feminine cues, they had a higher intention to buy the wine. The gender cue influence was so strong, it trumped the effect of that knowledge,” said co-author Christina Chi, a professor at WSU’s Carson College of Business.
Test 3: The taste test
A third experiment with a set of 138 women involved a taste test. Participants were given two bottles of the same red wine, but with different labels.
More women who tasted the feminine-labeled wine ranked it higher in fruit flavors, such as red current and blueberry, than those who tasted the same wine with a masculine-cued label. That was despite the fact that those flavors were not dominant components in that particular wine.
Women also connected more mineral flavors with the masculine-labelled wine.
However, the participants who tasted the feminine-labelled wine reported liking it less than the women who tasted the masculine-labelled wines. That could be explained by the incongruence between the expected flavor (influenced by the feminine label) and the actual taste of the wine sample (which had a medium body, tannin and alcohol level).
The key takeaway? “When designing the labels, winemakers should involve more women in the process, and it’s highly advisable to pilot test the labels among consumers for gender cues,” said Chi.
Study: 'The eyes have it: How do gender cues in wine labels influence US women wine consumers?' https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2024.103930
