Browsing by Author "Jaakkola, Taru"

Objective of this Master's Thesis was to explore levels of subjective and objective knowledge of Finnish wine consumers and knowledge levels' hypothesized link to exploratory buying behavior. Subjective knowledge refers to what consumers think they know about a given subject whereas objective knowledge is verifiable factual knowledge. Questionnaire was published in December 2016 via Finnish importers consumer newsletter and website. Resulting 300 responses were analyzed in SPSS using most importantly cross tabulations, One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and logistic regression analysis. Both subjective and objective knowledge were found to have a positive relation to exploratory buying behavior - more knowledgeable consumers in both dimensions of knowledge exhibited more exploratory tendencies. Effect was however more limited than that of being "active" with respect to wine: this dimension surfaced as having most effect on exploratory tendencies, linking also to higher average price of wine choice. Assumption based on prior theory of at least moderate correlation between consumer's objective and subjective knowledge was confirmed - there was no remarkable conflict between reported subjective knowledge and assessed objective knowledge. Men scored higher objective and subjective knowledge levels but no evidence of influence of other demographic variables was found.