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Wine choices are not always fully understood by academic researchers or the industry. This paper aims to outline and test a theoretical model proposing that wine consumption may be dependent on differences in consumer expertise, the hospitality situation, characteristics of the wine itself and an interaction of these variables.

Three empirical studies (total sample size = 356) tested these theoretical propositions. Consumers with varying levels of wine knowledge were presented with experimental vignettes showing videos of wine opening and pouring and were asked to pair wines with hospitality situations.

Study 1 found that consumers with low product knowledge were more sensitive to hospitality situations and extrinsic product attributes (closures) than were the experts. Study 2 found that wine hospitality situations fall into three predicted categories, namely, food, friends and formality, although contrary to prediction, the presence of food was the weakest predictors. Study 3 demonstrated the robustness of the three-dimensional structure of wine hospitality situations.

These studies provided important practical information because targeting various market segments requires the industry to know what product attributes are favored by different groups of consumers different situations.

Previous researchers have discussed the difficulty of measuring consumption situations. By limiting these studies to wine consumption within hospitality situations, the authors learned much about how consumers’ characteristics, product attributes and the situations interact to influence not only product assessments but also choices.

The paper seeks to establish the effectiveness of social media advertising and participation by brands through incidental exposure. Using experimental design, in a social media environment, this paper aims to extend incidental exposure research in the context of social media.

This paper uses an experimental design with controlled image durations using MediaLab and DirectRT, allowing for precise image display times and randomization of screens. Participants were split between high-involvement and low-involvement product categories, and the brand choice exercise was administered in an on-screen experiment.

The paper provides support that incidental exposure influences brand choice. Further, it indicates that for low-involvement product categories, the type of social media exposure does not influence brand choice significantly between types. For high-involvement product categories, ads perform better than sponsored story executions; consumer-generated brand messages perform better than brand-generated messages; and the influence of reference group affects brand choice.

This paper tests one social media environment using a desktop Web environment. Additional studies would be needed to test other social media environments and mobile technology.

The paper provides evidence that brands benefit by simply participating and advertising in social media, but the execution style matters to a greater extent for high-involvement product categories in influencing brand choice.

Mere exposure to a brand message may influence consumers unknowingly. Repeated exposure as short as 5 s per viewing is related to increases in brand choice.

This paper extends research on incidental exposure and establishes a key positive brand outcome for practice and research, and it provides the first exploration on the outcome of incident exposure to brand messages in social media. The results suggest that social media and advertising by brands have positive impacts beyond traditional measures of success online.

Wine tasting is an integral method for engaging consumers. Producers go to great lengths to educate consumers on evaluating quality based on taste and aroma. Understanding the sensory and perceptual processes of wine tasting may offer insight into how consumers at different levels of wine expertise use their senses to evaluate wine.

This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to examine processing in the frontal lobe of the brain during wine tasting and aroma evaluation. Sixty subjects evaluated the tastes and aromas of wine samples with various levels of sweetness, whereas 16 defined areas of their frontal lobes were measured with functional near infrared measurement.

The subjects’ orbitofrontal cortices were activated during both olfaction (smelling) and tasting. Further, larger areas of the frontal lobes showed significant activation during the olfaction task than during the tasting task. The level of the subjects’ wine knowledge did not predict differences in neural processing when participants evaluated aroma of wine; however, subjects with higher wine knowledge did show significantly higher activation in specific frontal lobe regions when tasting. Differences in levels of product involvement among the subjects were not significant for the tasting task, but were significant for the olfaction task.

Developing a better understanding of the biological processes involved in tasting may lead to understanding the differences in consumer preferences for wine. This, in turn, may assist tasting room managers to adjust their tasting procedure to be tailored to consumer-specific needs.

The Legends in Marketing series presents compilations of the seminal works of marketing scholars who have made significant contributions to the discipline of marketing. This review discusses the structure and contents of the volumes that comprise Legends in Marketing: Shelby D. Hunt (Sage, forthcoming).