The Future of Online Wine Sales
“He said: “I think the market has just tipped. All of a sudden, rather
than being driven by 20-year-olds who were the early adopters [of the
net], I’m starting to get emails from people saying ‘as a pensioner …
The silver surfers have arrived.”
This comes from a news story put out by Off License News. Just how significant is this finding that older drinkers are coming to the on-line wine sales channel?
I think it must be significant. Despite the talk about young folks being the one’s helping to drive wine’s sales accent, it is somewhat older folks that do the real buying of wine. There appearance in any significant number in the on-line world would in fact represent a notable turning point in the on-line wine sales world.
Now get this quote, from the same article:
“Vinitrac research from Wine Intelligence in March 2007 found that 16%
of regular wine drinkers in the UK had bought wine online in the
previous six months. Internet shopping was marginally more popular
among those aged over 55, the survey found, with those under 34 the
least likely to buy wine online.“
These kind of findings remind me that we are still very much in a transitional phase when it comes to the world of on-line sales and wine. While on-line purchasing has overtaken some industries such as travel and books, this same kind of transition WILL come to the world of wine and completely transform how this beverage is sold. And for those companies that are making full court presses to be at the center of this transformation and who have the funds to keep going and breaking even during the transition, AND who have the ability to either develop or implement “ease-of-use” technology to the sector will find themselves sitting pretty in the years to come.
It also suggests that as this transformation to on-line sales continues, the political pressure to make these virtual transactions easier will become more intense. This is bad new for those who still want to argue that restricting consumer choice in wine is a needed trade off in preventing all those teens from purchasing Paso Robles Syrah and the Austrian Rieslings they are known to crave.
Original post by Tom Wark