Consumers’ wine preferences in a changing scenario: a generalized multinomial logit approach

Abstract

The international economic crisis has had a severe impact on the Spanish economy. Alongside, political changes have also occurred in Catalonia the recent years. Data from two identical Discrete Choice Experiments performed in two different times (2008 and 2010) show how these changes did affect consumers’ wine preferences. The Generalized Multinomial Logit model (GMNL) has been applied as it allows determining consumers’ degree of certainty and heterogeneity in the choice making. The results showed that the scale and the taste heterogeneities have decreased significantly after the economic crisis, which may imply that external common circumstances had a homogenising influence in consumer choices by decreasing the level of randomness of consumers’ selection. The consumers’ preferences for a Catalan origin of the wine also increased