Cornell Study: Promote Wines, Not Prices
Promoting Wine Sales May be as Simple as a Table Tent - Promotion Must be Paired with Careful Pricin
ITHACA, NY, December 5, 2006. Although ordering wine with dinner has increased in popularity in recent years, many restaurant guests often are hesitant to order wine because they're not sure of which wine to select. One of the best ways to help restaurant guests make their selections and, incidentally, boost sales is to feature a limited number of wines on a table tent. The study is published in the November 2006 issue of Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly. The Quarterly is available by subscription from Sage Publishing, but this featured article is available at no charge from Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research at:
www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/publications/hraq/feature/.
In the article 'Wine Promotions in Restaurants,' Cornell professor Brian Wansink, and author of the book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, tested three types of promotions to encourage wine and his research team used table tents to study how customers would respond to the three different types of wine promotion. In the first promotion some table tents simply stated that the restaurant was featuring one wine, while others promoted three or five wines. The second test used table tents that suggested one, three, or five pairings of wine with specific menu items. The final promotion offered two-ounce tasting portions at $2 each. In that test, some table tents promoted a tasting of just one wine, while others promoted a flight of three or five wines.
All of the promotions increased sales of the featured wines, except for the table tent that listed five pairings of wine and food (which may have simply been too much information). The promotion that most increased sales of the featured wines was to offer wine tastings.
Wansink cautions that most of the sales for the featured wines came from guests who probably would have ordered one of the non-featured wines. For this reason he cautions against the temptation to use price to promote wine sales. 'It is critical to note that although the featured wines were promoted through the use of menu pairing and taste samples, they were not price promoted,' wrote Wansink. 'This suggests that care be taken to not promote low-margin wines that could cannibalize the sales of higher-margin wines.'
About The Center for Hospitality Research
A unit of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) sponsors research designed to improve practices in the hospitality industry. Under the lead of the Center's 54 corporate affiliates, experienced scholars work closely with business executives to discover new insights into strategic, managerial and operating practices. The Center also publishes the award-winning hospitality journal, the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly. To learn more about CHR and its projects, visit www.chr.cornell.edu.
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