In 2017, Korea''s imports of luxury bags surpassed France to rank fourth in the world (Euro-monitor, 2018). But compared to the size of the luxury goods market, the market for luxury wines is very small. However, imports of high-priced wines have been steadily increasing since 2016(Korea Customs Service, 2018). However, research on high-end wines and consumer research are very limited and a variety of studies are needed.
Therefore, we classify the consumers according to the attitudes of luxury consumers and analyze the differences in their wine selection attributes.
The study was conducted on consumers who experienced wine in the last three months and who have had experience in purchasing and using luxury goods for the past two years.
A total of 331 questionnaires were collected for empirical analysis. Frequency analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, multidimensional analysis, MANOVA analysis and crossover analysis were performed using the SPSS 23.0 statistical package program.
The results of the study are summarized as follows.
First, as a result of the cluster analysis of the factors of the luxury consumer attitude, the cluster was divided into the active group, the apathy group, and the critical group. Wine selection attributes were found to be six factors: traditional, Appearance, Visuality, Sensuality, origin and Alcohol.
Second, the most influential variable for dividing the cluster is rarity. Therefore, the most important variable in the luxury consumer attitude is the rarity.
Third, the attributes of wine selection used as an independent variable and the attitude of luxury consumers used as a dependent variable, and the result of discriminative analysis, showed that the appearance factor was the most important variable in determining the cluster.
Therefore, the appearance factor and the visual factor can be seen as a result of reflecting the intrinsic tendency of the luxury consumer to show it to others.
Fourth, Cross-analysis between demographic analysis and clusters found that the higher the age, educational background, and annual income, the higher the active group and there were more women than men, with the most purchase at large discount marts, and "drink at home" was the most.
The limitations of this paper are as follows.
Of the 2029 questionnaires surveyed, only 331 respondents experienced wine within the last three months, and they had experience purchasing and using luxury goods for the past two years, and concentrated in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, and 71.3% were women and it was not a luxury item that included middle-priced Coach and MCM brands among luxury brands. Therefore, it is considered difficult to generalize.
This study provides implications for the activation of high-end wine market and consumer research, and suggested the direction of future wine marketing. The study will also serve as the basis for literature on the study of premium wine markets.