Consumer Choice: Dynamics of purchasing with or without tasting

The Zucker study showed no choice overload in the wine retail setting.  The study was interesting despite its methodological limitations.  Zucker positioned the results as demonstrating the wine is a different type of good from jam.  With jam, consumers were happier choosing from a smaller number of jams in a tasting.

I wonder how the wine dynamic changes if you consider the number of wines offered in a tasting instead.  My hypothesis is that choice overload would set in quickly if you were tasting 15-20 as opposed to the traditional 3-6 offered in a tasting.  Additionally, if you aren't spitting out the wine as you go, choice would become even more difficult as you get buzzed from the tasting.  In this respect, I would guess wine would perform in just the same way as jam.

At Levi's Stadium, we would run wine tastings on gamedays (see photo below).  Originally, we invited eight wineries each game and each would pour tastes of two wines for a total of 16 wines to taste.  With this format, we found that people gravitated towards the most well-known wineries (e.g., Robert Foley, Kosta Browne) rather than trying all of the wines or using the opportunity to learn about new wines.  Ultimately, we reduced the total number of wineries pouring to six per game for a total of 12 wines to taste, which seemed to create a better experience.  Sales data is too variable game-to-game to determine if this increased sales.

Napa hosts many large tastings like Auction Napa Valley and Premiere Napa Valley where a huge number of wineries are pouring.  This makes sense to increase exposure and be inclusive, but perhaps tastings at the appellation level (as some appellations have launched) actually makes more sense to drive sales.  This modification would limit the number of choices and make it easier on consumers to make a decision.