Study of young people’s wine consumption habits at the Corvinus University of Budapest

Farkas, Ágnes

Keywords: wine consumption, import, substitution product, marketing mix, attitude, crisis

The Hungarian wine market has been undergoing continuous transformation, one of the principal reasons of which is Hungary’s European Union membership since 2004. The main disadvantage coming from the membership is that foreign wines are no longer rare curiosities but they are present to an extent that they disturb the market and constitute significant competition (in addition to the substituent products of the wine) for the domestic wines. The current economic crisis may also present various risks to the industry, such as a drop in consumption or the increase in the consumption of foreign wines with a good price/benefit ratio. Since I consider it important to preserve the market dominance of the Hungarian wines in the domestic market, I did not address the issue of domestic wine consumption habits on a theoretical level, but also conducted a questionnaire-based study in this field. My analysis focused on the wine consumption habits prevailing in the domestic market. I particularly tried to compare Hungarian and imported wines based on the judgments of the respondents.
My research found that domestic wines had a disadvantage in terms of marketing, but their quality and cost/benefit ratio is judged to be higher than that of foreign wines. The students of the Corvinus University of Budapest are not susceptible to wine marketing because they consider other factors when selecting a wine. Foreign wines have better marketing, but the members of the group I examined prefer domestic wines, as my third hypothesis indicates. The research findings indicate that Hungarian wines are more competitive for the students.

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