Identifying Wine Innovators: A Test of the Domain Specific Innovativeness Scale Using Known Groups

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the Domain Specific Innovativeness scale (DSI) for “known‐groups validity.” Data came from two groups of student volunteers: 48 students registered for a specialty class in wine in the Hospitality Administration department of a US public university and 28 students from two marketing classes at the same institution, In addition to the DSI, the questionnaire contained multi‐item scales to measure wine involvement, opinion leadership for wine, subjective and real knowledge of wine, and wine‐related behaviour. The analysis verified that the DSI was highly correlated with the other wine measures, the two groups were quite different on all the measured wine variables, and that the DSI played a significant role in discriminating between the members of the two groups. These findings strongly support the validity of the DSI and promote its use in studies of wine innovators.