Wine-related lifestyle (WRL) Market segmentation: Demographic and behavioural factors

Copyright © 2007 Institute of Masters of WineThe primary objectives of this research were to further strengthen the wine-related lifestyle (WRL) instrument and to compare and contrast the composition and nature of the wine market segments with the earlier studies. Data collection took place by means of the computerassisted telephone interviewing (CATI) method among wine drinking residents in South Australia, resulting in a final randomized sample size of 401 households. People who were the primary wine buyer of their household and had consumed wine in the six-month period prior to the survey, were interviewed. The South Australian wine market consists of five wine-related lifestyle (WRL) segments, each differing in size and level of involvement with wine. This segmentation structure is relatively stable but continues to evolve as two new market segments were identified, namely ‘mature time-rich wine drinkers’ and ‘young professional wine drinkers’. The WRLinstrument is a domain-specific segmentation tool that is suitable for identifying and measuring wine market segments, but needs to undergo further testing on both a cross-cultural and data collection method basis. The research reconfirms that there are five lifestyle-related segments in the South Australian wine market and that this is of an evolving nature. The findings are somewhat tentative as the study was conducted in South Australia only.Johan Bruwer and Elton L