Wine consumer acceptance of innovative agroecological practices: a choice-based conjoint and latent class analysis on wine from sheep-grazed vineyards

The objective of our study is to explore whether consumers accept a specific sustainable wine innovation. More precisely, we consider wine from sheep-grazed vineyards as a sustainable wine product attribute. We used a choice-based conjoint approach to estimate consumers' preferences for wine product attributes. Preference heterogeneities in the sample were assessed using a latent-class approach. The results show that ‘level of dryness’ and ‘growing area’ are the most important wine product attributes for consumers. In the whole sample, the sheep-wine product feature is an important product attribute, too. Furthermore, we identified four segments of wine consumers: ‘Sustainable white wine consumers’, ‘Ethnocentric wine consumers’, ‘Dry-wine lovers', and ‘Sustainable red wine consumers’. Producers of wine with sustainable features should consider moderately high prices when deciding on their prices. Wine marketers of sustainable wine should follow a targeting strategy based on the results of our analysis of consumer groups. Wine from vineyards grazed by sheep can be a promising product. In particular, the ‘sustainable red wine consumer’ and ‘sustainable white wine consumer’ segments are of interest. These segments differ in age, sex distribution, and wine knowledge from each other.