Would you Pay a Price Premium for a Sustainable Wine? The Voice of the Spanish Consumer

Abstract

Sustainability has become one of the most important challenges for wineries over the last decade. From a marketing point of view sustainability can be considered as a way to differentiate wines to meet some market segment demands. Furthermore, this strategy can be also considered necessary to guarantee the future development of the wine sector. Given that some wineries have stated that production costs are higher for sustainable wines than for conventional wines, the goal of this paper is to analyze the premium price that consumers are willing to pay for a sustainable wine with respect to the price of a conventional wine with similar characteristics. Contingent valuation has been used to test the differences in the willingness to pay for sustainable wines among the main Spanish wine market segments. Results reveal that most Spanish consumers are willing to pay a higher price for sustainable wines, and that there are differences among the main market segments.