How Consumers Buy Wine
Wed. Mar, 2009 by Amy
I found the first seminar I attended at the Oregon Wine Symposium to be quite interesting. It was presented by Larry Lockshin, head of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s Wine Marketing Group in Australia.
He spoke about how consumers make their wine choices and the relative importance of various packaging characteristics. He also discussed long-term purchase records of large numbers of consumers focusing on repurchase patterns, regions, price points, and grape varieties.
Trying to keep this as condensed as possible (and noting that this is my memory and interpretation), there are two kinds of consumers- high and low involvement. Although the high involvement spend more, the light buyers actually offer much more potential in the market since there are so much more of them. Wine drinkers in general tend to be an experimental group, not as loyal to brands or varietals. He recommended making Oregon and the grape variety much more prominent than most are on the label. Vineyard names and AVAs may not be as memorable, desirable or even understandable in consumers out of the general area.
Some things that seem to influence people to choose a certain wine: gold medal or point scores on label, style and color, previous online exposure…
Some things that are less important: Surprisingly, taste. People mostly remember what they don’t like. Environmental statements had little effect, although more for women than men, and more on higher priced wines. People expect wine to be a fairly organic and environmental process in general. However, retailers will drive environmental labels for now rather than consumers.
It was interesting to hear how the focus group surveys were conducted, and how everything is relative according to who you are selling to and where it is sold. Once again, it says to me the importance of knowing what your customer wants and needs, not only what you with all the inside knowledge already, think is good. For example, a parallel in the design world is when designers build websites that look amazing and impress their designer friends. However, the actual end user does not have a 24 inch Mac monitor, requires a more straightforward navigation design, and is missing search engine features. We have to all make the best designs and push the limits, but remember the audience.
Tags: Oregon Wine Symposium