Presentation at the 9th Annual AAWE Conference – “The use of big data to develop an understanding of the link between consumer preference, climate and demography”

Alastair Reed attended and presented at the 9th Annual Conference of the American Association of Wine Economists between the 27th and 31st of May 2015, in Mendoza, Argentina. Alastair’s presentation was titled “The use of big data to develop an understanding of the link between consumer preference, climate and demography.” It uses massive datasets (millions of transactions) from two of Australia’s largest retail chains to better understand the drivers of consumer choice. The work was roughly divided into two parts. The first was a proof-of-concept phase which sought to prove the benefits of huge datasets to constrain variance by confirming a dogmatic tenament of the wine industry; people drink more white on hot days, and more red on cold days. This was remarkably successful, showing among many other things, that over 25% of Shiraz sales are dictated by temperature. Surprisingly however, this relationship is strongly dependent on the mean income of the catchment area for a retail outlet, which led to the second component of the study; is varietal preference linked to geography on a city level? Using transactional data from across Melbourne it was shown that there are clear patterns in the preference for such bedrock varieties as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Riesling.