Parker Backlash from Biased Panel?
That’s what it looks like, as the new Wine Opinions study that claims Parker’s influence is weakening with American consumers seems to have primarily interviewed readers from Wine Spectator! If the study was to be unbiased, it would seem only fair that an equal number of Robert Parker and Wine Spectator subscribers would have been interviewed.
The goal of the study was to find out who influences high end wine consumers (if you want to call over $20 high end, I think $50 would be a better number) purchasing decisions. The problem is, if the majority of people interviewed don’t read the Wine Advocate or Erobertparker online, than they probably aren’t going to list them as a purchasing influence, aside from those that use information in retail stores.
A more accurate way to measure if Parker is losing his influence could have been interviewing consumers who were already looking at his reviews and have now moved to another source. The market research done here doesn’t look like it would be a reliable way to gauge if Parker were indeed losing his edge. The data gathered should never have been applied to that statistic.
Some good points were made over at Vinography in the comments section on how Parkers influence doesn’t seem to be weakening.
This just goes to show how unreliable and inaccurate market research can be. It’s unfortunate that people jump on information that is incorrect.
