The impact of "wine country of origin" on the perception of wines by South African and french wine consumers: a cross-cultural comparison.

Culture is an important factor that influences how marketing interacts with food choice. This study aims at exploring the effect of consumers' Country of Origin (COO) on wine representations and perception using Chenin blanc as a model. The first objective was to evaluate the role of origin in the construction of the representation. We used the theoretical framework of social representation to compare South African (SA) and French consumers' representations via a word association task. The results indicated that SA representations are dominated by consumers' experience of the wine (sensory and emotional dimensions), whereas French representations are dominated by the wine itself, in particular its origin and mode of consumption. The second objective was to evaluate the effect of origin on wine categorization in two conditions: with and without information concerning the two geographical origins of the samples. Results. Showed that providing information on the origin of the wines affected...