It can be tough to design wine labels that appeal to everyone—aficionados and newcomers alike. As a manufacturer, you have no guarantee what the consumer will focus on or how he or she will interpret the information you provide. Something that might seem perfectly obvious on the drawing board might go over customers’ heads in practice.
However, this is partly why items that appear on wine labels should perhaps be given a little more context for purchasers to understand. For example, a recent column in the Washington Post from wine reviewer Dave McIntyre responds to the perception of a wine’s alcohol content, and the impact that has on consumer behavior.
McIntyre notes that in the American market at least, more alcohol in a wine appears to make it more appealing, even when the number on the bottle might be skewed slightly so that the winemakers can skirt higher tax rates. As such, customers can’t always count on exactly what the label says, especially since wines are classified by the amount of alcohol they contain.
“From a truth-in-labeling standpoint, the alcohol level on the label is less helpful to us consumers,” McIntyre writes, saying that his readers should “think of it as an indicator of style, not quality.”
Labeling decisions reflect the way a product is categorized and seen in the eyes of both the government and those interested in buying. Your company should thus pay attention to the way it’s been making labels in the past, and perhaps look to possible alternative methods that might best suit both audience and ideology.
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