Although e-commerce still weighs less than 2% of off-trade wine sales in Italy, the double-digit percentage growth rates that are affecting purchases in this channel year after year certainly cannot go unnoticed. especially from the manufacturers.
And precisely in consideration of this development, Wine Monitor through the partnership with VINO75.COM, the specialized wine shop for online sales born in Florence in 2014 within the startup accelerator Nana Bianca, has produced a Report on the profile of the Italian online wine buyer.
The in-depth study highlighted how the identikit of the "typical consumer" concerns a male person, aged 48 (61% of buyers belong to the so-called "generation X", aged 36-55 ), residing in the regions of Central-Northern Italy and with a preference for still red wines and sparkling wines.
“Although wine e-commerce still weighs marginally on total sales in Italy, there is no doubt that the trend is growing; just look at what is happening outside national borders where in markets such as France or the United Kingdom the incidence of online wine sales exceeds 10% or even 20% in the case of China”, says Denis Pantini, Head Wine Monitor by Nomisma.
There is no doubt that this is a growing phenomenon and the wine producers themselves are aware of it, as stated by the approximately 200 wineries interviewed by Wine Monitor during the study. "Already today, around 50% of the companies interviewed sell their wines online - directly or through specialized sites -, while another 17% intend to resort to this channel in the coming years", continues Pantini.
But how much do you spend on average buying wine online? The average price of a bottle purchased (0,75 ml, VAT included) is around 13 euros, but it goes beyond 14 in the case of still reds and sparkling wines. Then making a comparison by age group of buyers, it turns out that Italian Millennials, although they weigh less (for now) in purchases than Generation X (36-55 years) and baby boomers (56-65 years), buy however more expensive bottles: in the case of still reds the average price per bottle comes close to 16 euros while for sparkling wines it even exceeds this level.
"From our experience as a reference technological platform for small and medium-sized wineries of excellence, e-commerce increasingly represents a fundamental sales channel for the commercial strategy of wineries" he declares Andrea Nardi Dei, Founder and CEO of VINO75.COM.
“The reason lies in the fact that e-commerce enhances the product thanks to easily usable informative content, as well as being able to reach distant and complex markets such as the Chinese one, where the traditional distribution of Italian wine struggles to enter“ concludes Nardi Dei.
In fact, despite a growth of over 30% in Chinese wine imports from Italy recorded in 2016 compared to the previous year, the share of our products in this country's total purchases still remains marginal, not reaching 6%. There will be some reason.
