Wine label design as a strategic tool to attract consumers A marketing study on Sicilian wine positioning

Packaging has become one of the most important marketing tools for wineries as it provides information about wines to consumers and also, thanks to the use of images, producers can communicate to the market a message consistent with their products and with their target consumers. With this work we aim to discover how important labels are for wineries’ positioning strategies and also how much they influence consumers in the purchasing process. A sample survey was conducted using a stratified sample and the statistical association between price ranges and types of labels was measured using Pearson contingency coefficient. Then the Spearman correlation coefficient was used to measure the concordance between the two linear orders of prices, assigned to each type of label tested both by consumers (hedonic prices) and by producers (market prices) in the first place revealing the producer name (brand) and later without it. We also compared the ranking of price ranges given by consumers, and the ranking of their judgments on the design (graphic, pictures, etc.) of each type of label considered. The results show that wine firms were able to hit their target market using labels that properly expressed the company’s mission and core values; labels represented the characteristics and qualities of the wines to which they referred (both with the brand shown and without). Producers targeted their market as they consistently positioned their wines using labels that appeared to consumers adequate to the price, to the quality and to the firm’s values.