Time to capture new customers

Consumer perception defines consumer habit – and the perceptions of wine held by consumers of beer and spirits will directly affect whether or not these same consumers bring a glass of wine to their table.

That may sound like a rather simplistic statement, but there is now solid research to suggest that many people who drink alcohol, but who choose not to drink wine would be keen to do so if we can find a way around what they perceive as hurdles.

Funded by Wine Australia, Prof Anthony Saliba and colleagues from the National Wine & Grape Industry Centre at Charles Sturt University spoke with 10,000 people across five countries over three years to find out why they are what he terms ‘wine avoiders’.

These are not teetotallers; they are people who drink alcohol and may accept wine in certain social situations, such as a small glass of sparkling for a toast, but will usually decline wine in favour of some other alcoholic option.

‘Absolutely everyone we spoke to in some way aspired to drink wine, even the younger groups who we thought would say “we’re just not interested”,’ Dr Saliba said.

‘They said things like “look I’ll get into wine I’m just a bit young for it now. Wine’s something you drink in your 30s. If I go to a dinner party with friends I’d like to drink wine but I don’t know what to choose”.

‘Even people who didn’t like the taste of wine wished that they did. They say things like “it looks very enjoyable, very sociable”.’

Perhaps not surprisingly, taste was the most common issue, but the research suggests this was often about lack of familiarity with what is quite a novel taste.

‘We showed that wine liking increases substantially over multiple exposures’, Dr Saliba said. ‘Even where the wine was diluted with soda water by 50 per cent, the more people tasted wine, the greater their liking. This finding could be further investigated to assess the robustness and applicability to the cellar door and other wine exposure contexts.’

A second common issue was difficulty in choosing wine, which Dr Saliba finds interesting given that ‘the sector goes to such an effort’.

‘What wine avoiders are saying is that it’s not working. We’re not doing what they want us to do in helping them make a selection and be comfortable that they are choosing something they are going to like.

‘This is a bit of a double-edged sword. I think one of the reasons that the craft beer sector has really grown in recent times is the diversity and interest and the bigger story. I certainly wouldn’t recommend that we lose that in wine, but it’s almost like we need an entry door for some people.’

Some participants raised concerns about health issues with wine, notably hangovers and allergies, though the data suggests many were over-emphasising problems. Quite often it was more about how much was being drunk than what.

Beer and cider drinkers, in particular, also commented that wine was not refreshing enough and couldn’t be drunk quickly enough on a hot day.

Responses and attitudes were pretty much the same from participants in Australia, the UK, the US and Canada, but there were some differences in India (highlighted in the final report of the research).

Significantly, the number of ‘wine avoiders’ was high in all 5 countries, ranging from 23 per cent of the alcohol-drinking public in Canada to 33 per cent in the US. Based on current adult population levels, that comes to 313 million potential new wine drinkers.

Dr Saliba said he wanted to understand what percentage of wine avoiders were out there to see if it was ‘worth the sector’s efforts’ to tailor something specific to their perceptions.

‘I’ve been a bit of an evangelist about this for some years because I’d go around to different wineries and I’d listen to their strategies around developing new brands so they could steal customers off their next door neighbour and I thought “why are we moving the deck chairs around all the time, why don’t we just create new customers”?’

With this in mind, the research also demonstrates how the key findings can be used to drive a product development process. New wines were developed based on what ‘wine avoiders’ wanted, with independent testing validating that they were reasonable prototypes or first attempts.

Click here for more information about this project.