Johan Reuter, a member of the Association of American Wine Economists, wondered if advertisers in the wine magazines get a “kinder” treatment than those who don’t advertise. Or in other words: do advertisers get better scores? So he decided to investigate. The result is a paper published by the AAWE called “Does Advertising Bias Product Reviews? An Analysis of Wine Ratings” (the full report can also be downloaded). The conclusion is essentially that no, advertising does not bias the review. It is also interesting to read the response from Wine Spectator to the paper. So everything is fine. On the other hand, the problem might be different: Perhaps advertisers get reviewed and those who don’t advertise have a more difficult time to get reviewed. One wine producer we talked to said that when they stopped advertising the suddenly no longer appeared in the reviews. Perhaps a subject for a second paper?
