Vin de Napkin - Dubious Research Edition

More doodlings on the back of a wine stained napkin ...

I don’t mean to pick on university professors or researchers, but I can’t help but notice that the preponderance of research that comes out, specifically wine-related research from universities, is usually pretty lame. 

Yeah, I get the “publish or perish” notion, but is our academia sector now reduced to studying whether its more important for a winery to build a brand or to focus on high-quality? I suppose these two things can be mutually exclusive of each other, but on the branding front, didn’t Proctor & Gamble figure out this brand marketing thing 60 years ago?

The world is littered with “better” products that weren’t marketed well ...  you have to be a savvy marketer to survive these days ... in wine or any consumer product category.

Excerpt from a Lubbock Online regarding a Texas Tech wine marketing study:

High brand awareness is more likely to lead to brand survival than high perception of wine quality, according to the study. It tracked the fates of 25 Texas wineries since 1991, when more than 900 Texas wine enthusiasts rated the quality and name recognition of the wineries’ products.

Researchers found an unmistakable trend: the more recognizable the brand, the better its rate of survival. They found no such link between quality ratings, so wine makers may be better off investing in marketing rather than expensive grapes, the study indicates.

With so many brands to consider, Texas consumers tend to put more weight in a wine’s cover than its content, the study also suggests.

“A lot of wineries put so much effort into improving the quality, but not as much attention is being paid to marketing. This study shows it needs to be done,” said its lead author, Natalia Kolyesnikova