Applying best‐worst scaling to wine marketing

Abstract

Purpose: Most marketing researchers use rating scales to understand consumer preferences. These have a range of problems, which can be greatly ameliorated by the use of a new technique, best‐worst scaling (BWS). The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the BWS method by an empirical example, which demonstrates the steps to design and analyze a BW study. Design/methodology/approach: A brief critique of ratings and rankings is presented. Then the basic concept of BWS is described, followed by how to use the BW method to explore how Australian and Israeli consumers choose wine in a retail store. The paper demonstrates the design of the questionnaire as well as the steps to analyze and present the results. Findings: The BWS approach can be easily implemented for research in wine business especially for multicultural comparisons as it avoids scale confounds. After transformation of the best and worst scores of each respondent for each attribute, the data can be analyzed directly using various statistical methods and can be expressed as choice probabilities. Research limitations/implications: The advantage of BWS is its ability to compare attributes using B−W and B/W scores. The BW method provides a better discrimination of the attributes analyzed. Practical implications: The simplicity of the analysis and graphical presentation makes a significant contribution to practitioners as the B−W counts and probabilities of attributes are easy to obtain and understand. Originality/value: This paper presents BWS method in a form that researchers and practitioners can use and adopt for research and market surveys. The paper presents an empirical example using BWS method to determine the importance of wine cues while consumers are choosing wine in a retail store.