While Australia has more drinkers who buy wine than any other Western country, Aussie baby boomers are driving wine sales growth, not young consumers as once thought, says an industry researcher.
CEO of Wine Intelligence (market research group) Lulie Halstead, said older drinkers in Australia are moving away from traditional beer and spirits to wine. She stated at a wine industry conference “There’s a misnomer within the wine industry that it’s younger consumers that are driving all of market growth,”.
She said 66 per cent of Australian wine drinkers drink wine about once a month (66 per cent), with 59 per cent in the UK and 33 per cent in the US. Of Australia’s 10.8 million drinkers of wine, aged between 48 to 49.
Alcohol awareness and Drink Driving advertising campaigns has helped the shift from beer and spirits sales to wine sales amongst baby boomer consumers, Ms Halstead said. “Wine is seen as the more acceptable face of alcohol,” she said.
Wine Intelligence’s research also revealed growth in both red wine and white wine consumption in Asian countries, in particularly in China. There are a increasing number of Chinese women adopting wine as a part of their health and beauty routine. “Red wine is seen as enhancing skin tone, digestion… a small glass of wine on the night stand before bed will aid the beauty regime,”.
Apparently for Chinese mean, it’s important to be seen as being able to choose wine for their girlfriend or partner. Ms Halstead said these trends represent great opportunity for Australia’s wine industry to increase wine exports to China, and Asia overall but she warned they needed to understand the cultural trends and influences driving the demand.
She also stated “If you don’t listen and understand the motivation of your consumer let that be at your peril,”. “If you don’t understand what’s driving drinkers to buy wine, it doesn’t matter what we do in the wineries and the vineyards, we’re not going to connect with those consumers to achieve wine sales.”
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