VinoLoverMore and more people are choosing to buy their wines online. The pandemic has accelerated many changes in habits that were already incipiently taking place, and the growth of online shopping is here to stay.
Many people now prefer to choose their favourite wines from the comfort of their own home, but favouring a personalised service, carefully selected products and quality catalogues.
A habit that is here to stay
In December 2020, International Wines and Spirts Record (IWSR), the leading source of data and analysis on the global beverage alcohol market, forecast a 42% growth in the value of alcohol e-commerce by 2021, to $24 billion, in the top ten markets accounting for 90% of total alcohol ecommerce value: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK and the US.
What began as a way for consumers to adapt to the effects of Covid-19 has become an increasingly important retail channel around the world, the study said.
“Consumers’ increasing inclination to shop online has been driven by necessity in recent months, but these shopping behaviours are here to stay. As brand owners increasingly invest in this channel, markets need to develop a tailored strategy,” said Guy Wolfe, director of IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.
At the end of 2021, IWRS published that alcohol e-commerce is expected to reach $42 billion by 2025.
A trend that is confirmed
A recent study by Rabobank claims that US alcohol e-commerce sales in 2021 exceeded $6.1 billion in 2021 and will continue to grow over the next year. This means that online alcohol sales grew by 131% since 2019.
According to a report by the Spanish Wine Market Observatory in December 2021, after a very complex 2020 due to the restrictions caused by the health crisis, wine consumption in Spain during 2021 has shown a clear upward trend, in line with the performance of the global wine (and must) trade, which reached a value a year-on-year value of €32.56 billion in mid-2021, surpassing the level of January 2020, before the pandemic.
As far as Spain is concerned, within this growth, the evolution of sales in the “third channel” -which refers to sales in online shops, as well as wine shops, wine clubs, or direct from wineries, among others- have registered a very significant growth, specifically 12.9% and, in terms of volume, up to 39.2%.
The Report on food consumption in Spain 2020 published at the end of 2021 revealed not only a large increase in wine consumption (23%), but also that “2020 has been a successful year for online shopping, also known as e-commerce or e-commerce. Although the total volume is still a minority (2.3%), this last year it increased considerably, with a variation of 61.5% of its volume”.
Keys for 2022
According to IWRS, the growth of e-commerce in alcoholic beverages has brought with it a diversification of the consumer audience and the creation of new niches. Having comprehensive and diverse catalogues, with carefully selected choices and sustainable product propositions, is an added value in this new horizon in 2022.
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