Online retailers are often the starting point for today’s consumers, whether they end their shopper journey online or in store. A recent study shows that in the U.S., 68% of consumers began their search with Amazon. However, gathering behavioral data related to online and mobile shopping is challenging – especially in the alcohol category.
Published on Quirk’s, we shared our recently conducted study on behalf of a global producer and marketer of beer, wine and spirits to understand how to overcome four of the key challenges facing the alcohol category online:
- Mobile-friendly has become mobile-first. With nearly 74% of online purchases happening on mobile devices, what does a mobile-first strategy look like in the alcohol category?
- Lost sales are linked to poor online presentation. One-third of online alcohol shoppers who purchased less than they planned said they could not find the item, brand or pack size they wanted.
- Many retail partners in the alcohol category are not competitive online. Online sales currently represent less than 1% of total alcohol industry sales, far behind other CPG categories. As a highly regulated industry, alcohol brands are limited in how they can engage with retailers, sell and ship their products. However, they’re experiencing rapid growth (30%+) as click and collect offerings and online adoption grow at traditional retailers.
- Brands struggle to communicate variants in an e-commerce environment. Beer, wine and spirits offer a vast array of variants that are not easily communicated in traditional online images. For example, one vodka brand alone has 75 different SKUs including flavors and package sizes.