Trends in British Wine Market and Consumer Confusion

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: to give a descriptive outlook of the competitive environment in the UK wine market, and then to show the presence of “consumer confusion” elements in it. Design/methodology/approach – The consumer confusion concept has been considered as a framework in order to test the existence of the principal elements of consumer misunderstanding in the buying process. Data have been collected from secondary sources and through in-depth semi-structured interviews among a sample of 40 stakeholders of the wine supply chain in the UK. Findings – The main findings prove the existence of the essential characteristics that can generate a certain degree of consumer confusion, and the relative consciousness of key informants that some strategies need to be adopted to reduce it, although only a few have already been performed. Originality/value – This paper is probably the first work that tests the consumer confusion conditions through a qualitative analysis following the expectations of previous research conducted by Drummond and Rule.