Women taking part in the study reported a greater intention to purchase a wine when it had ‘feminine’ cues on its label, researcher said.
This effect was enhanced the more strongly participants identified with other women – something known as ‘in-group identification’, said researchers from Washington State University (WSU), writing in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.
Feminine cues were identified as including cute animals, female portraits and flowers, said the researchers, who acknowledged that both masculine and feminine gender cues tended to rely on stereotypes.
Study authors said the work responded to calls for more research about women consumers in the hospitality sector.
They said 59% of wine consumers in the US are women, based on 2021 data, and few studies have focused on the perceptions of this group in an industry where a majority of winemakers are men.
In an initial test to pinpoint key gender cues, researchers asked 90 women to rate wine labels as more masculine or feminine.
Labels with cute animals, flowers and female portraits were designated feminine, while masculine cues included labels featuring wolves and stags.
Wines displaying images of castles and bunches of grapes were rated neutral, said WSU.
After this, 324 women were shown fictitious wines, and participants said they were more likely to buy wines with ‘feminine’ labels.
A participant’s level of wine expertise didn’t appear to affect this, although it did moderate taste expectations, said researchers.
‘Whether they were knowledgeable or less knowledgeable about wine, when they saw those feminine cues, they had a higher intention to buy the wine,’ said Christina Chi, study coauthor and a professor at WSU’s Carson College of Business.
‘When designing the labels, winemakers should involve more women in the process,’ Chi said.
A follow-up taste test involving 138 women found that participants were more likely to enjoy a wine when it had a ‘masculine’ label as opposed to a ‘feminine’ one, however.
According to WSU, researchers believe this might be related to ‘the incongruence between the expected flavour influenced by the feminine label and the actual taste of the wine sample’.
