Wine E-commerce Remains a Niche

Jul 1, 2015

(Wines&Vines) - In a conference focused mainly on digital technology for better wine marketing and sales, the first speaker’s message was sobering. E-commerce remains a niche market for wine, and in stores the explosion of new wine brands has not created strong growth.

Almost all, or 96%, of consumer packaged good sales occur in stores, and just 5% of consumers intend to buy wine online in the next six months, according to Laurie Rains, a vice president in Nielsen’s Retail Consulting and Analytics Group.

As the first featured speaker at the June 25-26 Wine Industry Technical Symposium, Rains seemed to be grounding the audience of 250 with a picture of how conventional the wine marketplace is, before several speakers to follow would try to lift the attendees to the heights of digital marketing possibilities.

“While there is a lot of growth around spending online, for the most part people still shop in stores,” she said. Her research showed that 19% of consumers intend to buy shampoo or vitamins online, while just 2% intend to buy spirits online and 6% intend to buy beer online.

What’s more, growth in dollar sales for consumer-packaged goods in general is below the 2011 level, she said, and the change in units sold is flat. Nielsen expects the alcohol beverage category to do better, rising 3.6% in dollars and 2.2% in volume in 2015.

The state of the economy is perplexing, Rains said. Job growth, the housing recovery and lower gas prices have raised consumer confidence to near the pre-recession level, but health care costs are high, wage growth has been limited and contrary to the confidence indicator 50% of consumers surveyed think the U.S. is still in a recession. “These contrasts make it hard to find real growth opportunities,” Rains said.

The good news is that e-commerce has plenty of potential for growth. 87% of US consumers are online, with room to grow to the level of Norway and Sweden at 95%. 68% of US consumers now trust online comments. More than half of consumers say they are willing to try online grocery shopping, Rains said.


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