About the report

The Wine Channel Purchase Behaviour of Australian Wine Consumers report (December 2021) is the outcome of an original research project commissioned by Wine Australia. The report provides insights into how consumers choose between wine-buying channels, what barriers exist for each channel and how consumer choices and behaviour has been influenced by Covid-19 and associated restrictions. Opportunities for wineries to increase sales through winery-owned channels are identified.

Key insights and tips are summarised in the supplementary publications:

• Insights and tips for wineries
• Case study: Omni-channel strategy
• Case study: Personalisation and value adding
• Case study: Discounts and guarantees

Wine-buying channels analysed include:

• Bottle shop
• Cellar door
• Online retailers
• Winery websites
• Wine clubs: winery-owned and non-winery owned
• Mailing list sales

The report provides key statistics and analysis of:

• Frequency and spend characteristics for each channel,
• Changes in wine purchasing behaviour between 2019 and 2020,
• Future intentions for purchasing by channel,
• Deep dives into characteristics of purchasing from the cellar door, wine club and online channels and
• Barriers to buying online.

Report summary

Key findings from the research include:

• Online sales overtook cellar doors in 2020 as the second most popular channel for purchasing wine (after bottle-shops) and many consumers considered that this would continue in future
• Younger consumers were more likely to purchase wine through non-bricks-and-mortar channels than older respondents
• Nearly all channels experienced a decrease in frequency of use in 2020
• Roughly half of all wine consumers did not buy wine online in 2020 despite being confident in using the Internet generally to make purchases.

Source

The report was prepared for Wine Australia by Ballyhannan Project Management based on original research undertaken in the second half of 2021. The research included a mix of quantitative surveys of over 1000 wine consumers and in-depth interviews with 20 respondents recruited through the quantitative survey.