A Methodology for Evaluating How Product Characteristics Impact Choice in Retail Settings with Many Zero Observations: An Application to Restaurant Wine Purchase

An approach is developed to examine the impact of product characteristics on choice using a quantity-dependent hedonic model with retail panel data. Since panel data for individual products from retail settings can include a large number of zero sales, a modification of the zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression model is proposed for estimation. Results for this model compare favorably to results for alternative hurdle and negative binomial models. An application of this methodology to restaurant wine sales produces useful results regarding sensory characteristics, price, and origin/varietal information.