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WineEast (Continued from page 107.) the wines currently offered at various marketing outlets such as grocery stores, wine stores and competing independent wineries; 4) Identify and characterize the various market segments for wine; 5) Determine how consumers view the eastern wine industry and how the industry could build customer satisfaction and loyalty to increase its market share; 6) Recommend specific changes that will assist winery managers in improving their marketing, advertising and promotional programs; and, finally, 7) Use experimental economics to study how alternative advertising approaches influence consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for wines produced in the East. A portion of Objective 3 research utilizes survey data and experimental economics to shed light on the effectiveness of advertising/ promotion and other factors influencing consumers' willingness to pay for wines from the eastern U.S. Two sub-projects have been completed under the lead of Bradley Rickard at Cornell University in this area: The first examined how consumers respond to regional reputations—American Viticulture Areas (AVAs) and information that links AVAs to wine-producing regions in France (Rickard et al., 2012). A laboratory experiment was conducted in Cornell University's Lab for Experimental Economics and Decision Research for this study. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three different information treatments and were asked to place bids on seven white wines. The wines were from seven different AVAs in the United States: three from California, two from Oregon and two Need a Better Cork Supplier? All Natural Cork Closures Fresh Corks Directly From Portugal 4th Generation Family Cork Producer Free Branding Free Shipping Free iS Better Ask about our Progressive Discounts Experience the Slimcork® Advantage CALL TODAY phone (203) 681-7743 Cell (860) 335-0667 email: reliablecork@gmail.com www.reliablecorksolutions.com 110 W in es & V i ne s NOV E M b e r 20 13 Grapegrowing from Virginia. Expert wine ratings for each wine were presented in an effort to communicate that the wines were of similar quality. Wines in the first treatment were introduced without any additional information; the collective reputations (AVAs) were described in the second treatment, and the collective reputations were described and augmented with information about similar regions in France in the third treatment. Using the data from our auctions, we were able to employ an econometric model to disentangle the effects from the three treatments. Our results showed two important findings. First, drawing attention to AVAs for wines from emerging regions does not seem to impact consumers' valuation, even among consumers who are relatively familiar with wine. However, efforts to highlight AVAs in emerging regions as part of a larger package of information may be a critical component of developing a long-term strategy for building reputations of new wine appellations. Second, the study results suggested that information that uses references to well-established regions in France resonated with subjects in our experiment, and indicated that making such links to famous regions may prove to be an effective marketing strategy for emerging wine regions—notably among consumers with greater familiarity (and perhaps greater appreciation) for wine. The second Cornell market study explored the demand for eastern wines by examining wine lists at restaurants in New York state. Food and wine menus were collected from 1,400 Zagat-rated restaurants in the state, and the information was used in a statistical