The Sicilian sparkling wine. A Simple Correspondence Analysis (SCA) to know consumer preferences

Abstract

Sicilian territory vocation to the production of wines is a prerequisite needed to ensure a large variety of high quality products. Thanks to native cultivar and to non-native, with good adaptability, Sicilian wine firms diversified production, very appreciated by national and international markets, and expanded the supply of sparkling wines. Indeed, Sicily produces sparkling wines since the past century and now there are 21 Sicilian wineries that produce up to 33 different high quality sparkling wines with typical attributes of the territory and many denomination of origin (DOC). In 2008, Italy saw a significant drop in purchases for Champagne wine, which can definitely be seen as a great opportunity for Sicilian producers of sparkling wine to successfully enter in this market segment. Currently, Sicilian sparkling wines are sold in the local market; however, customer penetration is still low due to a lack of communication and advertising. This paper aims to investigate, through an experimental survey, consumer preferences on taste of Sicilian sparkling wines. We applied a Simple Correspondence Analysis (SCA) to data collected by a questionnaire, given to a sample of consumers participants to a blind tasting, in order to know, on the basis of their opinion on taste, the structure of dependence between types of sparkling wines tasted by consumers and their lever of satisfaction. So we were able to obtain information on some key factors to increase sales for this particular product.