Wijnbloggers aan de overkant van het Kanaal, maar ook de Franse, zijn de minst betrouwbare bron voor wijninformatie. De sites worden van inhoud voorzien door verschillende categorie

De reactie:

Around 20% of UK regular wine drinkers say they trust recommendations from an independent wine blogger. Is this good news or bad news for the wine industry’s fastest-growing method of communication? Arguably we took the sensationalist approach: “Bloggers are one of the least trusted source of wine recommendations” said our press release last week announcing the launch of the Internet and Social Media report, in part because it was true (the six other sources we tested, from supermarkets to regional promotion agencies, had significantly higher trust levels) and partly because we wanted to generate some debate (and sell some reports)
To summarize our position: we asked our normal sample of regular wine drinkers in three markets (USA, UK, France) a few questions about their internet and social media use. It turns out that many of them use the internet now to find out more information on wine, and a smaller proportion of them use more “Web 2.0” stuff – Facebook, blogs, and other interactive message-posting sites.
One widely reported criticism of the research is that if you have a small population using something, and ask everyone (users and non-users) what they think of that thing, the large number of non-users are often going to introduce a negative bias, and vice versa. Researchers call this the “double jeopardy” effect. Of course it is not universally true: ask 1,000 people whether they have driven a Ferrari, and you’ll get perhaps a 1% usage rate; ask them what they think of Ferrari the brand, and it’s likely that you’ll get a strongly positive response, even though 99% of the population have never sat in one.

In this narrow sense, the critics have a point: if, for instance, only 1 in 7 people use social media in the UK, trust levels in bloggers might be lower than they would be for, say, a supermarket’s website, which would be visited by a much larger proportion of the population.

But let’s follow this argument through. If we isolate those respondents in the UK using social media in the context of wine, we find that trust levels rise to 44% of users (as opposed to 19% for the total population). Unfortunately this still leaves the majority of social media users either distrusting or indifferent to the opinions voiced by independent bloggers, and also means that this source still comes 7th (out of 7) in terms of trustworthiness even among these active social media users – behind supermarkets, wine region promotion agencies, and brand owners themselves.

The other main criticism is that we didn’t ask the right questions. Clearly this is an area that we can debate- in fact we would invite critiques of our questionnaire if anyone is interested in making them – since we need to develop an effective assessment system for this medium in comparison with more traditional sources of wine information. I look forward to hearing your view.

Het persbericht:

Wine consumers wary of blogger recommendations, according to research
Independent bloggers are one of the least trusted wine information sources in the UK, USA and France, according to research published today, despite the growing importance of the Internet as a source of information about wine.
Data published in the new Wine Intelligence Internet and Social Media report series shows that 1 in 5 regular wine drinkers in the UK trust what independent bloggers say about a wine, compared with the 50%+ who trust what they hear over the counter in a wine merchant.
Trust levels for blogger recommendations are similarly low in the USA, while 80% of US regular wine drinkers say they trust what their local wine merchant recommends. The French are even more sceptical, with only 10% of wine drinkers seeing independent bloggers as a trusted source.
However, the enduring scepticism about bloggers does not appear to detract consumers from using the Internet as a source of information about wine. Some two thirds of the US regular wine drinkers surveyed now look for wine information online, with 1 in 3 using social media as a source. The UK and France are a little less wine active online, with just under half the wine drinking populations in these countries using the Internet for wine information and 16% using social media.
In the USA, websites run by wine shops, newspapers and smaller wine producers are the most used online sources, while supermarket websites rank below Facebook as a source of wine information. The UK tells a different story with supermarket websites proving the most popular online source, whilst in France the brand or producer websites are the most important destinations for consumers seeking knowledge.
Commenting on the research, Jean-Philippe Perrouty, Research Director at Wine Intelligence, said: “We have known for some time that consumers trust people closest to them for recommendations about wine. This data shows the power of the Internet as a way of leveraging this trust as the consumer’s search for wine knowledge moves online.
“It looks as if the trust levels built up over time by local wine merchants are transferring into the growing power of the Internet, while word-of-mouth recommendations are also migrating into the Facebook era. Clearly bloggers will have a role to play in this new world, but this research shows how important it is to build up trust levels among your audience.”
The Internet and Social Media report series is published today and reports are available for the UK, France and USA (Northeastern states) at a single licence user cost of