Wine Production and Tourism—Adding Service to a Perfect Partnership

Martin A. O’Neill and Adrian Palmer

Background

Wine tourism is now acknowledged as a growing area of special-interest tourism throughout the world, and it is an increasingly important tourism component of for many wine-producing regions.¹ With its wide range of benefits, including foreign-exchange earnings, the creation of both full- and part-time jobs, and the generation of secondary economic activity, wine tourism is emerging as a lucrative industry sector with the ability to generate substantial long-term wealth and sustain steady tourism growth for these regions. Consequently, support for and investment in the wine-tourism sector is now regarded as an essential regional economic-development strategy by government and by the wine and tourism industries.

Despite optimistic expectations of growth, wine tourism is confronted by a range of critical development issues that have the potential to interfere with its sustainability and long-term profitability.² One such issue is that of visitors' perceptions of the service received at the cellar door—that is, at the winery—and the effect of that service on consumer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and long-term behavioral intention. Attention to this issue has, in turn, led to a heightened concern by producers and consumers for the quality of service being offered. Whereas a winery's success was once determined solely by the quality of its wine, the development and important of the cellar-door concept now means that the quality of service received during a visit is just as likely, if not more likely, to drive future wine sales.

This article seeks to add to our understanding of customer service in the emerging wine-tourism sector. It first seeks to define the concept of wine tourism and the linkages between wine quality and brand values, as well as the role of a visit to the cellar door in reinforcing these linkages. {Note to the authors: As you see, I struggled with the preceding sentence. Did I get it correct on the rewrite, or did I misstep and are the linkages among all three? If the latter, what is the “these” being reinforced in the final phrase?-gw} That said, the main aim of this paper is to identify the attributes of service quality as they apply to visits to wineries. This article reports on a survey of visitors to wineries in Western Australia. From this, a framework will be developed within which areas for service-quality investment or disinvestment can be identified.

An Overview of Wine Tourism

As we stated at the outset, wine tourism has emerged as a strong and growing area of special-interest tourism throughout the world, and is now seen as an increasingly important component of the tourism product of most wine-producing countries. Some commentators suggest that wine tourism is fast replacing eco-tourism as the hot new buzz word of global tourism development and is becoming an important new niche market with considerable growth.³ Indeed, both the wine and tourism industries have achieved high levels of growth over recent years, and seem to be in the midst of what might best be described as a wine-tourism boom. Below we explain who is a wine tourist and what this booming new industry sector is all about.

Among the several definitions for wine tourism, the most widely used is that presented by Johnson, who describes the phenomenon as “visitation to vineyards, wineries, wine festivals, and wine shows for which grape wine tasting or experiencing the attributes of a grape wine region are the prime motivating factors for visitors.” ⁴ Getz suggests that wine tourism has three major characteristics, comprising the regional destination, the wineries themselves, and the tourists. ⁵ As such, a typical wine tourist may be viewed as any person, whether day-tripper or overnight visitor, who engages in the act of wine appreciation while visiting a wine producing region. Of course, there is no such thing as a stereotypical wine tourist, with Hall citing evidence to suggest a typology of wine tourists that includes wine lovers, wine-interested people, and the curious tourist.⁶ This list might even be extended to include a fourth classification as suggested by Spawton, the mobile drunk.⁷

As an emerging activity, wine tourism has been identified as one of a few tourism sectors that is genuinely concentrated outside traditional metropolitan areas and, hence, is viewed as playing a vital role in regional development, employment generation, business growth, tourism, and corporate investment.⁸ This view is supported by Kennedy who suggests it is helping revitalize and create jobs in traditionally rural and economically deprived regions. ⁹ It has the potential to give a strong competitive advantage to regions with a grape and wine industry, and to generate profitable business for wineries, other wine-related products, and for visitor services.¹⁰ Therefore, the benefits of wine tourism can be felt throughout the whole region and not by just the wineries themselves.

It is not surprising therefore, that the wine-tourism phenomenon has taken on truly global proportions, with individuals from both sides of the supply chain coming together to offer a broad range of wine-tourism experiences in most of the world’s wine-producing regions. Europe, of course, and France in particular leads the way with many well established wine-tourism experiences including the popular Beaujolais, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Côtes-du-Rhône, and Provence wine trails. Over recent years this list has been extended to include Corsica, Jura, the Pyrennées, and Savoie regions. Other European destinations offering a similar style of experience include Italy, Spain, and certain of the emerging European wine nations including Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. Next on the ladder in terms of truly outstanding wine tourism experiences is the United States, which currently sits at number four in terms of global wine production.¹¹ Renowned as a wine-producing country, the U.S., principally through its Napa Valley region, is fast becoming known as a leader in global wine-tourism destinations. Given that Napa Valley has over 270 vineyards, each offering its own distinct wine-tourism experience, it is not surprising that some five million wine tourists make their way to and through the Napa Valley annually.¹² The Napa Valley, of course, is just one of a number of wine-producing regions in California. Indeed wine tourism is big business throughout the state, with estimates of some 10.5 million visitors a year being put forward for the entire state.¹³ Lesser known, yet nonetheless growing in significance as a wine-tourism destination, is Washington state. According to Tice, wine tourism there is “taking off, fueled by the growing cachet of the state’s wineries.”¹⁴ This assertion is backed by a recent study by the Washington Wine Commission which showed that industry efforts to lure tourists to the region were paying off. With some 135 wineries statewide, it is estimated that almost two million visitors walk through winery doors annually and that these visits are worth an estimated $18.9 million a year.¹⁵

Hot on the heels of the U.S. is Australia, where wine tourism has long since been recognized as a vital and necessary plank for the economic survival of many rural areas. According to one analyst Australia’s wine-growing centers shine out as success stories generating an estimated AU$500 million (approximately US$100 million) for rural Australia each year.¹⁶ The Winemakers Federation of Australia estimates total Australian wine tourism figures to be on the order of 5.3 million visits per annum—worth $428 million in 1995 and expected to grow substantially to around $1100 million by 2025.¹⁷

Given this global growth, many smaller and lesser known wine-producing regions are now emerging as serious wine-tourism destinations. Countries like New Zealand, South Africa, Bulgaria, and various republics from within the former USSR are now tapping into this market potential. Even India, it seems, is trying to cash in. Express Travel and Tourism, India’s premier travel business magazine, reported on a recent attempt to put India on the world wine map and position India, through its Chateau Indage winery in the Sahyadri Valley, Maharashtra, as a new world wine destination.¹⁸

Understanding Visitor Perceptions

Despite optimistic growth forecasts and expectations, wine tourism in Australia is still a relatively infant tourism activity. As we said at the outset, this activity is confronted by a range of critical development issues that have the potential to cripple its sustainability and long-term profitability. One such issue is that of visitors’ perceptions of the service quality experienced at the cellar door and its effect on consumer satisfaction, future purchase intentions, and brand loyalty. Not surprisingly, there has been a heightened concern by both producers and consumers regarding the quality of services being offered. Indeed, the structure of the industry requires such attention. To take Australia for example, in 1997 the top three companies crushed over 50 percent of all grapes processed and the largest 20 producers were responsible for 98 percent of all wine produced.¹⁹ There were 914 wineries in Australia at that time, and there are over 1,150 as we write—reputedly with an additional winery coming into production every 84 hours.²⁰ This makes the market highly fragmented and increasingly competitive.

Differentiation is central to achieving the competitive edge required for survival and growth. Put simply, there is a need to understand the attributes influencing wine tourists’ decision in selecting wineries to visit and wines to purchase, as well as whether customers will repeat their retail and cellar-door purchasing.²¹ It has been suggested that many wine producers have been concerned in the past that the economic benefits of tourism have often been captured by tourism operators and other non-wine businesses, while wineries themselves have been left to bear the costs of providing the experience.²² For example, Hubscher comments that while the payback to the tourism industry is obvious, the payback to the wineries is less clear. ²³ This may in part be explained by the fact that many wine producers do not perceive themselves as offering a tourist product and are unaware of how to best attract visitors to their vineyard. In some cases, production-focused wineries (particularly small wineries) have seen tourism negatively, because tourists taste wines and demand vineyard tours, but are rarely interested in buying the wines themselves.²⁴ Where such attitudes underlie a winery operator’s thinking, profitably improving the quality of customer service at the cellar door will be a challenge.

In wine tourism, as with all aspects of tourism activity, the consumer’s perception of service quality is critical, with many commentators now suggesting clear and direct links with customer satisfaction, future behavioral intention, and long-term brand loyalty.²⁵ {I propose that we not go in that direction, since this is not really the topic of your article, and instead build your core thesis.-gw} A number of conceptual differences distinguish wine tourism from other forms of service activity.²⁶ Wine tourism involves customers’ visiting a vineyard where the experience of tangible and service-production processes are an essential part of the service benefit—in particular, the tangible product (the wine). It is on this benefit that many vineyard operators focus and use as a means of introducing and promoting their product. Many visitors to wineries may be on vacation with little likelihood of repeat visits in the near future. However, benefit to the winery may derive from visitors’ seeking out the winery's wine when they get back home and through word-of-mouth referral. Indeed, high levels of service can encourage the development of relationship-marketing strategies (e.g., through the use of mailing lists and targeted incentives), as well as a relationship to the brand in a more traditional sense.

For the winery owner, customers’ visits to the cellar door offer three benefits: distribution at a low marginal cost, the development of brand equity, and a chance to add value to their enterprise. With much of the world’s wine industry based on small and medium-size enterprises, cellar-door sales can be a critical outlet for sales dollars and customer contact.²⁷ This view is shared by the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, which in its National Wine Tourism Strategy suggests that “for small, especially newly established wineries, their ability to tap wine tourism will determine their viability.” ²⁸ For example, in Western Australia’s Margaret River region, cellar-door sales account for approximately 34 percent of annual sales revenue for wineries, with 15 percent of outlets reporting this enterprise to be in excess of 80 percent of sales revenue.²⁹ These figures indicate the significance of cellar sales to these wineries. The minimal distribution costs (by-passing wholesalers) and consequent high margins make sales at the cellar door are particularly attractive to wine producers. 

Creating brand loyalty takes on considerable significance in a competitive marketplace. Dodd and Bigotte state that "in addition to sales revenue, wine tourism offers benefits such as opportunities for market intelligence, increased margins above other retail outlets, and the chance to encourage brand loyalty toward a winery." ³⁰ Similarly, Nixon suggests that "the changing face of the winery tourist is a smart consumer. But they will be a loyal customer if we give them a reason and a means to be loyal." ³¹ The challenge is to find a means of providing “added value” elements to attract customers. Zekulich, for example, suggests that “new producers struggling to crack the retail market could seek greater reliance on cellar-door sales and direct marketing.… It could also mean associated facilities like food services and arts and crafts helping people sell their wines." ³² This is already evident, with many wineries’ having restaurants, merchandise on sale, and some even having overnight accommodations to attract visitors. Regardless of the approach, the cellar door is a vital link in the service chain. It is often the first contact that consumers have with a winery and its wines. Therefore, every aspect of the cellar door (including layout, appearance, and staff) can be of importance. Staff members, for example, can play a vital part in the quality of the wine tourist's experience at the winery. The staff’s friendliness, courteousness, and knowledge, along with the quality of service received from winery personnel are important attributes in a customer’s decision to purchase wine at the winery. In that regard, appropriate employee selection and training can be critical to the success of any tasting room.³³

Given the production orientation of many wine producers, not all of them have a highly developed understanding of tourists’ expectations. It is to advance understanding in this area that this article is directed. However, the fact should not be overlooked that there are many wineries that have developed their tourism activities to the point where these have become a dominant part of the business. By adding catering, conference, and exhibition services, among others, a relatively stable form of income can be generated. In such a visitor-based winery, the focus for quality management shifts from a sole preoccupation with the wine to a much broader management of the intangible visitor experience.

We now discuss methodological issues raised in the identification of service-quality criteria in wineries offering visits to tourists.

Research Methodology

Although it has been argued that service quality at the cellar door has considerable implications for wine producers, the issue has not been widely researched. Our study seeks to fill that gap by adopting a largely quantitative approach to identify significant trends among current visitors to wineries. It is recognized that a quantitative approach is not well suited to exploring the underlying symbolism or meaning of a visit to a winery, ³⁴ or gaining a deep understanding of the needs and motivations that lead individuals to visit a winery. Such an approach would form a future avenue of inquiry, and our quantitative survey may indicate questions that could usefully be explored with deeper qualitative research.

This study of customers’ perceptions of service quality at the cellar door was carried out over a three-day period in the high season at four cellar-door operations in the Margaret River region of Western Australia. The survey took the form of a 23-item self-completion questionnaire which visitors were asked to complete immediately prior to departing each winery. For each item respondents were asked to rate their perceptions of the dimensions listed on a five-point Likert scale anchored at strongly disagree (1) and strongly agree (5). In addition respondents were also asked to rate the level of importance attributed to each dimension on a similar scale anchored at low importance (1) and high importance (5).

Scale items were based on the 22 items of the original SERVQUAL instrument. In the absence of a previously validated scale that has been applied to wine tourism, this appeared to be the best basis for a measurement scale. This scale has been widely replicated in both inferred and performance-only-based disconfirmation measures and the factor structure has been found to be appropriate to a wide range of consumer services. ³⁵{Except earlier you said wineries are different, not typical. So, in keeping with that thought I’ve modified this section. Plus which, you next say that you made considerable changes to the survey instrument, further suggesting a lack of typicality. If I'm wrong, I’ll restore the original phraseology, but it didn’t scan to me.-gw} Because of the differences between cellar-door sales and other service activities, we modified the scale extensively to take account of the particular service setting to improve its content and face validity.³⁶ This was achieved through an initial review of the published literature on wine tourism, which extracted common points related to consumer evaluation criteria. This was supplemented with five focus-group discussions involving winery staff and customers. All discussions were recorded and subsequently analyzed. The resulting analysis was then cross-checked against independently transcribed notes for accuracy and, where appropriate, item wording was changed to better fit the context of the cellar-door experience. These discussions led to the exclusion of two of the original SERVQUAL items due to cumbersome language. Two items, which related to the range and quality of wines tasted and on offer, deemed by participants to be highly relevant to the evaluation of service quality in the cellar-door domain were added (scale items five and ten, see Exhibit 2). An additional item was included as an overall measure of service quality for the purposes of assessing convergent validity. A final refined list of scale items was shown to two participating winery owners and agreement reached that the items were valid indicators of service quality in the context of cellar-door operations.

Our research design applied the adapted SERVQUAL scale items to an Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA) framework. IPA has gained popularity over recent years for its simplicity, ease of application, and diagnostic value.³⁷ This analysis is best described as an absolute measure of performance that also seeks to identify the underlying importance ascribed by consumers to the various quality criteria under assessment.³⁸ Importance is viewed as a reflection by consumers of the relative value of the various quality attributes. It is this additional information that makes the technique more suited to the task of directing improvement based on what is deemed most important by consumers. Low-importance ratings are likely to play a lesser role in affecting overall perceptions, while high-importance ratings are likely to play a more critical role in determining customer satisfaction.³⁹ Lovelock, Patterson, and Walker have noted that Importance–Performance Analysis is an especially useful management tool helping to “direct scarce resources to areas where performance improvement is likely to have the most effect on overall customer satisfaction.” ⁴⁰ It also has the benefit of pinpointing which service attributes should be maintained at present levels and “those on which significant improvement will have little impact.”

Research Sample and Setting

The sample was drawn from visitors to four participating wineries in the Margaret River wine region over the three-day period spanning the Annual Margaret River Wine Festival, in December 2002. The selected wineries were chosen based on their willingness to participate in the research and on the fact that they offered an extensive cellar-door service. Margaret River is a tourism destination about 3.5 hours’ drive south of Perth—with a number of natural and eco-tourism features, good surfing, and vineyards and wineries to attract visitors. Its reputation as a premium wine-producing region has been forged over the last 15 years, and it now has an international reputation for its wines—particularly based on the Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay grape varieties. The region has some 130 wineries, of which just over 60 maintain a cellar-door operation. Six hundred questionnaires were administered, of which 353 were returned, representing a response rate of approximately 59 percent. Surveys were administered to all patrons as they exited each winery over the three-day period, and a small incentive in the form of a prize drawing for a mixed case of premium Margaret River wines was offered to help bolster the response rate.

Research Results

The results of the study are presented in three sections, followed by a section containing analysis. Section one provides a brief description on the demographic characteristics of the sample. Section two addresses the performance of the research instrument and includes reliability data and the results of the factor analysis. Section three presents an analysis of mean scores. Section four brings together mean scores for each service attribute within an Importance–Performance matrix, and, finally, comparison is made between two underlying dimensions of service quality that emerged during the analysis.

Demographic Characteristics

The principal demographic characteristics of the sample are shown in Exhibit 1. Of the 353 subjects included in the study, respondents were distributed almost equally by gender—160 (45.3 percent) men and 189 (53.5 percent) women (with four missing entries accounting for the remaining 1.2 percent).

Exhibit 1

Demographic profile of visitors (N=353)

Frequency of ages			Frequency of gender
18-24	40	11.3%	Male	160	45.3%
25-34	118	33.4%	Female	189	53.5%
35-44	71	20.1%	Not given	4	1.2%
45-54	58	16.4%
55+	62	17.6 %
Not given	4	1.2%

Respondents were categorized into one of five age groups, as shown in Exhibit 1. The 40 subjects aged between 18–24 years accounted for 11.3 percent of the sample, 25–34 years for 33.4 percent (118 respondents), 35–44 years for 20.1 percent (71), 45–54 years for 16.4 percent (58), and 55 years and over for 17.6 percent (62) of the total.

Of those surveyed approximately 54 percent (189) were first-time visitors to the winery. Moreover, 85 percent (297) of respondents visited a winery less than once a month. Previous research suggests that 65 percent of visitors to the region have visited it at least twice, suggesting a fairly high level of repeat visitation.⁴¹

Further examination of the demographic statistics reveals that the cellar-door customer was generally a managerial or professional person (67 percent) between 25 and 44 years old, indicating a well-educated customer base. While the majority of visitors were from Australia (just over 88.7 percent) only 11.6 percent (41) of the total were from the South West region, indicating a strong out-of-area interest in the region’s wine-tourism offerings. The remaining 11 percent (53) came from overseas. Almost 96 percent (338) of visitors stated that they would return to the wineries where they were surveyed. This is consistent with the relatively high mean performance values recorded for all attributes of the cellar-door experience (see Exhibit 3). In addition, almost 96 percent (338) of respondents stated that they would be happy to recommend the wineries they visited to others, and some 50 percent of customers surveyed reported that they had purchased wine during their visit. Almost 71 percent (249) of those surveyed stated that they had come across, tasted, or purchased the wines sampled on a previous occasion, and almost 38 percent (186) of respondents stated that they had heard of the respective wineries based on personal recommendation and other word-of-mouth sources. In addition, almost 36 percent of respondents indicated that they had previously visited the wineries under investigation. This supports the view from the literature that the majority of cellar-door customers are genuine buyers.⁴²{But earlier we said that wineries were frustrated because people came, demanded tastings, and then didn’t buy. Should we not delete that earlier assertion, given this finding?-gw}

Performance of the Research Instrument

While the overriding goal of the study was to address the issue of visitors’ perceptions of service quality, it also proved useful to test the use of the measurement instrument (that is, the adapted SERVQUAL) for measuring service quality within this service setting, that is, the cellar-door operation. Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry defined service in terms of five "RATER" dimensions (reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness). ⁴³ To this end a factor analysis using the principal component extraction technique was performed on respondents’ perception scores. The analysis made use of the OBLIMIN oblique factor rotation procedure in SPSS-X and is in keeping with the original SERVQUAL study.

While visitors were asked to complete the perception and importance sections of the questionnaire, only the perception (performance) scores from the 22-item scale were initially used to operationalize the service quality construct.

Exhibit 2

Dimensions of the cellar-door experience

{Note to the authors: I attempted to cast all of the variables into parallel structure, being that some were phrases and some complete sentences.-gw}

Variable

Comp I Comp II “Relate” “Logistics”

1. Facilities for visitors 2. Decor of the winery 3. Winery staff appeared neat 4. Brochures and signs 5. Range of wines 6. Problem solving 7. Ethos of right first time 8. Right first-time delivery 9. Convenience of tasting times 10. Quality of wine tasted 11. Knowledgeable staff 12. Non-excessive wait time 13. Staff willingness to help 14. Staff responsiveness 15. Staff behavior instilling confidence 16. Feeling of security in dealing with the winery 17. Staff being consistently courteous 18. Staff having product knowledge 19. Being made to feel like a special person 20. Staff having visitors’ best interests at heart 21. Staff understanding the specific needs of visitors 22. Staff giving individualized attention to visitors Eigenvalue % of variation Coefficient alpha

.824 .722 .745 .852 .496 .638 .851 .822 .634 .564 .597 .401 .452 .514 .435 .522 .621 .600 .519 .617 .946 .891 .915 .844 13.382 1.278 60.829 5.811 .96 .90

Note: Factor analysis of respondents’ performance scores only.

Exhibit 2 illustrates strong factor loadings (item to total correlations) along two dimensions with coefficient alpha scores of 0.90 and 0.96. {There isn’t actually a range, is there? Just two scores.-gw} This is clearly at variance with the original SERVQUAL factor structure. From the analysis, extracted component one is reflective of a combination of the reliability, assurance, and empathy dimensions from the original SERVQUAL instrument. Viewed in the context of the cellar-door experience, component one (labeled here as “Relate”) seems to focus on issues of contact and the personal and relational aspects of the cellar-door encounter. Component two is largely reflective of the relatively tangible and logistical dimension of the original SERVQUAL and is labeled here as “Logistics.” These items appear to focus on the physical and process aspects of the service encounter, for example, the setting, décor, appearance of staff, and timeliness of the service received.

The instrument performed well in terms of both reliability and validity. Overall reliabilities were alpha = 0.94 for the importance scale and 0.96 for the performance scale. Overall reliability for the importance-performance (IP) difference scores was also high, at alpha = 0.93. These reliability scores clearly exceed the usual recommendation of alpha = 0.70 for establishing internal consistency of the scale.

Construct validity was also addressed in terms of both convergence and the research instrument’s ability to discriminate between the underlying dimensionality of the service-quality construct. Convergence was investigated by calculating the mean difference scores for each of the 22 scale items and (using Pearson’s product moment correlation) correlating these with the mean score from an overall single-item measure of quality, which was also included in the instrument. A correlation of 0.376 was found which, while low, was nonetheless significant at the 1-percent level.

Analysis of Item Mean Scores

The next stage of the analysis was to examine the sample responses across the 22 item attributes to assess visitor perceptions of service quality and the relative importance assigned by visitors to each. For each respondent, an Importance–Performance score was calculated to analyze the gap between the two. This information is presented in Exhibits 3 and 4, where mean scores for all respondents are shown for each of the service-quality attributes as per the underlying factor structure (Exhibit 2).

Exhibit 3

Importance–Performance analysis for the component “Relate”

Quality attribute	Mean importance	Mean performance	Performance minus importance	t value	Sig. (2 tailed)
Problem solving	4.05	3.93	-0.12	-1.58
Ethos of right first time	4.01	3.91	-0.10	-1.54
Actual service right first time	3.99	4.02	0.03	0.231
Knowledgeable staff	4.38	4.26	-0.12	-1.40
No excessive waiting time	4.40	4.35	-0.05	-0.617
Staff always willing to help guests	4.50	4.47	-0.03	-0.882
Never to busy to respond to guests	4.48	4.32	-0.16	-2.86	.004
Staff behavior giving confidence	4.34	4.31	-0.03	-0.62
Staff making customers feel secure	4.12	4.27	0.15	2.50	.013
Staff consistently courteous	4.47	4.45	-0.02	-0.48
Knowledge to answer guest questions	4.43	4.33	-0.10	-2.02	.044
Made to feel like a special individual	3.99	3.90	-0.09	-198	.049
Visitors’ best interests at heart	4.04	4.04	-0.00	-0.263
Understood the specific needs of guests	4.07	3.98	-0.09	-2.08	.039
Individualized attention to guests	4.28	4.14	-0.14	-2.18	.030
Overall mean values	4.21	4.16	-0.05	1.57	0.118

To complete the Importance–Performance analysis, a series of paired-samples t-tests were run to evaluate where mean performance scores differed significantly from mean importance scores. The analysis highlights a high degree of collinearity within the results for both the perception and importance measures, which at first glance may be looked on as a weakness of such measurement scales. We believe, however, that given the time required to complete the questionnaire and the discriminant evidence provided that these results are a true and accurate reflection of visitor perceptions when recorded. 

Exhibit 4

Importance–Performance analysis for the component “Logistics”

Quality attribute	Mean importance	Mean performance	Performance minus importance	t value	Sig. (2 tailed)
Facilities for visitors	4.25	4.31	0.06	1.11
Décor of the winery	4.12	4.34	0.22	3.15	.002
Winery staff has neat appearance	4.01	4.44	0.43	6.72	.001
Brochures and signs	3.70	3.93	0.23	3.67	.001
Range of wines	4.28	4.03	-0.25	-3.81	.001
Convenience of tasting times	4.24	4.29	0.05	1.06
Quality of wine tasted	4.55	4.27	-0.28	-5.21	.001
No excessive waiting time	4.40	4.35	-0.05	-0.617
Staff always willing to help guests	4.50	4.47	-0.03	-0.882
Overall mean values	4.21	4.26	0.05	1.49	0.154

Analysis of the two tables reveals that the relative mean scores for each of the quality items are skewed towards the positive end of the scale with a combined (Exhibits 3 and 4) mean score of m=4.20 for perceived importance and m=4.18 for perceived performance for all operators.

While the results paint an overall excellent picture of cellar-door service provision, operators should not be complacent, as the results reveal that they are marginally underperforming in 15 out of 22 of items assessed. Negative scores indicate that service delivery did not match the level of importance that visitors attributed to the item. Most worrisome is the fact that visitors were unhappy with the range and quality of wines on offer for tasting. As Exhibit 4 illustrates, the negative scores recorded for both of these variables were found to be significant at the level of 1 percent (p < 0.001). The negative scores, modest though they may be, should be of concern to operators, as the range and quality of wines available are clearly important reasons that tourists visit the wineries in the first place. There may be a link between these two variables, in that if visitors where unhappy about the range of the wines on offer they might also be concerned about the quality of this wine. This is an ever pressing problem for the wineries that is not easy to resolve. In short, visitors arrive expecting to taste the premium wines for which the various wineries have become recognized, only to be told that these wines are out of stock or require a high tasting fee.

Importance–Performance Matrix

The next stage in the analysis examined the relative positioning of the individual service quality attributes in relation to overall mean performance and importance for operators. One of the advantages of using a weighted performance measure is that attributes can be plotted graphically on a matrix, and this can assist in quick and efficient interpretation of the results. Exhibit 5 highlights the relative positioning of attributes in matrix format, with the importance values on the vertical axis and performance values on the horizontal axis. This matrix shows three individual items where there was a significant difference between importance and performance scores. On two of those items, the appearance of the staff and winery décor, the wineries were actually overshooting with regard to the importance ascribed by visitors. The only important item on which the wineries fell short was the availability of the wines.

X

Never too busy to respond to guests

X Quality of Wine Tasted

X

Décor of the Winery

Range of Wines X

C

A

B

D

Exhibit 5

Importance–performance matrix of individual service attributes

When presented in matrix format (Exhibit 5) the results present operators with the following strategic alternatives.

(1) Quadrant A (high performance, low importance) indicates a misuse of the operator’s resources. While judged to be performing well above average in relation to the provision of the particular service attributes, customers in their assessment of the overall cellar-door experience have deemed these attributes relatively unimportant. It is unlikely therefore that any further investment or improvement in this area will lead to a greater perception of quality on the part of the consumer.

(2) Quadrant B (high performance, high importance) reflects a situation where operators are perceived to be performing above average in relation to the delivery of those service attributes deemed most important by customers.

(3) Quadrant C (low performance, low importance) reflects the fact that certain aspects of the cellar-door experience are not being performed to their full potential. When viewed in the context of the corresponding importance weighting, however, any pertaining improvement effort would have to be questioned.

(4) Quadrant D (low performance, high importance) is where the greatest improvement effort is indicated. Attributes that fall into this category are deemed to be of great importance to customers in their overall evaluation of the service experience, yet the wineries are underperforming in the customers’ eyes. It should be a priority to focus improvement efforts in this area.

Analysis of Service-quality Dimensions

The final stage of analysis examined the service quality dimensions extracted during the initial factor analysis ( from Exhibit 2).

Exhibit 6

Importance–performance scores for service-quality dimensions

SERVQUAL dimension	Mean importance	Mean performance	Performance minus importance	t value	Sig. (2 tailed)
Relate	4.21	4.16	-0.05	1.57	0.118
Logistics	4.21	4.26	0.05	1.49	0.154

As with the preceding individual-variable analysis, Exhibit 6 illustrates that operators are performing well above the midpoint of the measurement scale in relation to each of the two quality dimensions that we identified. Operators do seem to be experiencing some difficulty, though, with respect to the relational aspects of the cellar-door experience, although this aspect was not found to be significant. Analysis reveals that both dimensions are rated as equally important to visitors. This is an interesting finding, and reinforces the importance of both the technical and relational aspects of the service-quality construct at the cellar door. The corresponding performance scores illustrate that operators have performed better in relation to the “Logistics” dimension (m = 4.26) of the cellar door experience. Using a paired samples t-test, the “Relate” and “Logistics” means were found to be significantly different at the level of 1 percent (t = -5.098; p < 0.0001) (Exhibit 7).

Exhibit 7

Paired samples t-test of mean Relate and Logistics components

Mean perception scores

Relate = 4.16 t = -5.098; p < 0.0001

Logistics = 4.26 df = 347

This is no doubt reflective of the importance that most operators attribute to the physical aspects of their operation—that is, the wines. This relates not solely to the actual cellar door counter, but to each tangible element on show at the winery, including signs, entrance roads, staff presentation and grooming, production and bottling plant, viticulture machinery, display of testimonials and awards, surrounding gardens and vineyards, parking facilities, and even children’s play areas. While the quality of the wine on offer for tasting is undoubtedly at the forefront of most visitors’ minds, operators understand that there is great potential for the physical surroundings and other tangible cues to have a profound effect on the perceptions patrons form and take away about the service they receive.

Conclusion

The paper has sought to highlight the emergence and significance of wine tourism as a new growth sector of truly global proportions. Additionally, the paper has also sought to stress the importance of the cellar-door concept and corresponding service levels to the future success of wine tourism operations. It has shown that success depends not only on the quality of the wine being offered but also on the way it is offered for sale within the cellar-door environment. {I’m sorry, Professor O’Neill, but your study just does not support that assertion. The customers are overall quite satisfied with their cellar door experience. There is exactly one problem, and that is the premium wines being unavailable for free.-gw} While this study reported that the non-availability of wines was seen as a significant failing of wineries, the study in itself cannot explain the complexity of factors that led visitors' to stress such high importance to this attribute. This study has not been able to build a picture of the consequences of failure to deliver on that attribute. The approach adopted in this study cannot segment visitors into categories of knowledge and liking for wine, as distant from casual visitors who may be novice wine tasters. To answer these questions, further qualitative research would be useful.

Finally, this study was undertaken in the context of Western Australian’s wine tourism sector. Given that the industry is still young, and Australians have been relatively late adopters of quality wine, compared with many "old world" countries, limitations when extrapolating to other countries should be noted. It is likely, for example, that attributes of importance may differ in France and Germany, where there is a much longer tradition of buying wines from the cellar door. [end of text]
Endnotes

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² M.A. O’Neill and S. Charters, “Service Quality at the Cellar Door: Implications for Western Australia’s Developing Wine-tourism Industry,” Managing Service Quality, Vol. 10, No. 4 (2000), pp. 112–122.

³ B. Cambourne, “Wine Tourism in the Canberra District,” Wine Tourism—Perfect Partners, loc. cit., pp. 171–184.

⁴ G. Johnson, “Surveying Wine Tourism in New Zealand,” Quality Tourism: Beyond the Masses,. Proceedings of the First National Tourism Students Conference, Dunedin, Tourism Club, University of Otago, 1997.

⁵ D. Getz, “Wine Tourism: Global Overview and Perspectives on its Development,” Wine Tourism—Perfect Partners, loc. cit., pp. 13–34.

⁶ C. Hall and N. Macionis, “Wine Tourism in Australia and New Zealand,” in Tourism and Recreation in Rural Areas, ed. R. Butler, M. Hall, and J. Jenkins (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1998).

⁷ T. Spawton, “Understanding Wine Purchasing: Knowing How the Wine Buyer Behaves Can Increase Your Sales,” The Australian and New Zealand Wine Industry Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1986), pp. 54–57.

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¹⁰ Getz, pp. 13–34.

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¹⁶ A. Jolley, The Wine Industry, Wine Tourism and Tourism in General, Supporting Paper No. 5. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, 2002.

¹⁷ Macionis, pp. 35–50.

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