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Erring Experts? A Critique of Wine Ratings as Hedonic Scaling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2021

Denton Marks
Denton Marks*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics Emeritus, College of Business and Economics, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, c/o 4444 North Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211-1773, USA; e-mail: marksd@uww.edu.
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Abstract

Consumers use expert ratings to help choose wine, and economists find correlations between ratings and transaction prices. Rating scales resemble hedonic scales in the behavioral sciences, which suffer from an “intersubjectivity” problem. Taste is a private sensation; people taste differently (an external validity problem), so ratings are often unreliable hedonic markers of enjoyment. But why? Hedonic measurements from food science (“general Labeled Magnitude Scales”) attempt to adjust for differences in perceived sensory sensitivity and offer clues. Resulting insights illustrate wine ratings’ shortcomings as reliable guides to enjoyment. (JEL Classifications: C14, D12, D91, L15, L66)

Keywords

expertshedonic scalingwine ratings
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Wine Economics , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , November 2020 , pp. 386 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © American Association of Wine Economists, 2020

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Footnotes

The College of Business and Economics, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has supported this research. I appreciate helpful comments from Victor Ginsburgh, Karl Storchmann, and three anonymous referees.

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